Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 03 | Page 8

NEWS Kenya based Kopo Kopo partners with Mastercard to boost transactions with Diamond Trust Bank as part of its acquiring strategy in the country. The Kenyan rollout reinforces the commitment made by Mastercard in February to empower over 150,000 merchants in the market. The Kopo Kopo partnership will help the technology company achieve a significant portion of this target. Additional markets impacted will include Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, and Zimbabwe. Kopo Kopo will offer the service in partnership with Diamond Trust Bank as part of its acquiring strategy. Merchant service provider, Kopo Kopo, announced their partnership with Mastercard to roll out Masterpass QR across 11 markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, impacting over 250,000 micro and small businesses over the next five years. The mobile payment solution will deliver an efficient and secure acceptance solution for micro, small and medium enterprises and a convenient consumer experience. Bank acquirers in partnership with Kopo Kopo, in the various markets, will enable previously excluded merchants to be financially included as part of the rollout. Merchants in Kenya will be the first to benefit from the partnership, with thousands of Kopo Kopo micro, small and medium enterprises gearing up to go live with the solution. Kopo Kopo will offer the service in partnership Using Masterpass QR, business owners can increase revenue through the acceptance of mobile and digital payments, while reducing their exposure to the risks and costs of managing cash. Payment is instantaneous and guaranteed, meaning that merchants no longer need to wait days for transactions to reflect in their accounts. By partnering with Mastercard, Kopo Kopo will remain ahead of the curve, growing their network with a strong offering and providing the current merchant network with the latest and most secure payment solutions. Algerian Icosnet launches UC cloud using Avaya Aura and Equinox Avaya and Icosnet have announced a strategic partnership to jointly provide unified communications technologies from a cloud platform in Algeria. With growing demand for advanced connectivity and communications solutions, the new cloud-based offering will bring innovative technology consumption models to help drive digital transformation within organisations in the public and private sectors in this emerging market. (Left to right) Nagib Reaidy, Avaya; Ali Morsli, Icosnet; Lionel Hamman, Avaya; Mariem Toumi, Icosnet. Based on Avaya Aura and Avaya Equinox, the unified communications cloud-based service offered by Icosnet provide streamlined, mobile-first communications that are less complex than many legacy systems. The service will enable Algerian organisations to leapfrog traditional enterprise communications models and add advanced capabilities in a hybrid or pure cloud model. For example, organisations can communications-enable the business applications and browsers that are used most often within the organisation, making it easier and faster for employees to communicate and collaborate with customers, partners and other colleagues. 8 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com