EcoCash partner, Mahindra Comviva’s payPLUS now Visa Ready

Mahindra Comviva isn’t exactly a household name, even though it’s been behind some retail level solutions. Locally, it is Econet Wireless’ technology partner in delivering the EcoCash platform and its companion, the EcoCash Debit card MasterCard.

Now, it’s payPLUS mobile POS solution has been approved to join the Visa Ready Program.  This was announced at a press conference held by the Mobile Financial Services provider. As a new Visa partner, the Visa Ready Program will help them learn the ropes according to Visa standards in mobile point of sale payments.

Mahindra Comviva has made strides into Africa offering mobile value added services including mobile wallets directly and also offers enterprise communications platform for 16 African countries through Bharti Airtel.

They have been several mPOS solutions running under the Mobiquity payPLUS umbrella that focus on maintaining the ATM card as the dominant transaction instrument such as the plug and play dongle card reader solution similar to Astro Payit. They also have a standalone unit that works in proximity with a mobile device.

Joining the Visa Ready Program will establish them as a trusted partner in providing financial payment solutions as they will now provide acceptance solutions in line with Visa standard requirements.

After the mobiquity payPLUS launch we anticipated a move by Econet to deploy the card readers into the market especially when it ran the EcoCash in kombis trials. Perhaps the same challenges that Astro faced deterred Econet from even trying. After all, the mobile money model in Zimbabwe was really not designed for cards, but rather for the reach it provides on any phone models, thus catering for all classes of people.

image credit – teleanalysis.com