Imagine trying to buy a book on Amazon with your credit card, and you’re immediately greeted by an error message saying, “Your card has been declined.” Very annoying, right? I totally understand how you feel; I’ve had a similar experience, too. To avoid going through that phase again, I decided to find out the top 15 virtual dollar card operators in Africa. With these operators, you can seamlessly make payments for all your online transactions, whether it’s for e-commerce, subscription services, or even international travel bookings. Find the top 15 virtual USD card operators you can use in Africa below. Disclaimer: All the providers listed below are just personal recommendations. Do your research to see if they meet your needs before committing to them. What Is A Virtual Dollar Card? A virtual dollar card is similar to a physical debit/credit card, but it is only available online. Just like your physical card, you can put money in your virtual card to make online purchases. The Top 15 Virtual Card Operators In Africa Below are the top virtual card operators you can use in Africa: 1. Chipper Cash Virtual Dollar Card Operator Chipper Cash is a pan-African Fintech company founded by Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled in 2018. They both decided to build the Chipper Cash app after experiencing frustration trying to make payments to people in some African countries. Currently, Chipper Cash has an app, and it has over 5 million downloads on the Google Play Store. What Does Chipper Cash Do? Chipper Cash allows users to send and receive money in the US, UK, and some other African countries, including Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, Rwanda, and Kenya. Furthermore, it has a reloadable virtual USD card that allows users to make payments for shopping or subscriptions on international platforms. Furthermore, to claim your Chipper virtual dollar card, you’ll need to have at least 3,000 naira in your wallet if you’re a Nigerian or 42.63 rand for South Africans. For other African countries, you’ll have to convert the amount to your country’s currency to get an idea of how much you’ll need. However, the amount needed to get a Chipper Virtual USD card varies depending on your country. If you’re in the US, you can get your card for free. Additionally, you can find out Chipper’s cash card spending, withdrawal, and funding here. Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 2. Grey Grey is a digital banking platform that allows Africans to open USD, GBP, and EUR accounts for free, enabling them to receive or make payments in over 80 countries globally. This virtual dollar card operator was created by two Nigerians, Idoreyin Obong and Femi Aghedo in order to make it easy for African freelancers and remote workers to receive payment without worrying about exchange rates or transfer fees. As a remote worker who has used Grey, I’d like to say that the company has achieved its goal. Furthermore, individuals residing in African countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania can make use of Grey. Additionally, Grey virtual USD card operator has recorded over 500k downloads on the Google Play Store. Grey Virtual USD Card Grey provides a virtual USD Mastercard that allows users to make international transactions and payments with any platform that supports USD. You can create your card by visiting their website or directly from their app. It’s important that you have some money in your dollar wallet to create your virtual card. You’ll need $5 to create and fund your card, i.e., $4 for creating your card and $1 to fund it. Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 3. Cardify Africa Cardify Africa is a virtual dollar card operator founded by Tunde Buremo. It is an online platform that helps people manage their digital wallets. Furthermore, Cardify aims to make spending across various fiat and digital currency wallets effortless. With Cardify Africa, you can use cryptocurrency to pay your airtime, mobile data, electricity, and other types of bills. This digital platform is mostly available to Nigerians. However, the platform offers a virtual dollar card that Africans can use. Cardify Africa Virtual USD Card Individuals can use the Cardify Africa virtual USD card to make transactions and pay bills in foreign currencies. The virtual card also allows users to fund their wallets with stablecoins like USDT or BUSD to pay for subscriptions or make purchases on Amazon, Jumia, Aliexpress, and so on. Furthermore, Cardify offers various dollar card options. You can create a dollar Mastercard, Visa card, or Vervecard. To get any of these cards, you’ll need to fund your dollar wallet with a minimum of $5. This is because you’ll need a $2 fee for card creation. Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 4. Eversend Eversend is a virtual dollar card operator that allows Africans to send, receive, and exchange money in various countries, including Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Europe. This platform was born out of frustration after Stone Atwine couldn’t send funds to his grandma from abroad. Stone prefers to call Eversend a neobank. A neobank is an online banking platform that allows users to check accounts and access credit cards, as well as provides them with tools to help improve their financial health. Furthermore, Eversend can help users convert between UGX, KES, and USD. Eversend Virtual Dollar Card Eversend has a virtual dollar card, which you can access on its mobile app. You can use the card to pay for goods and services on international platforms that accept Mastercard. Additionally, Eversend offers users the chance to save up to 13% in foreign exchange fees when topping up their card. To create an Eversend virtual dollar card, you’ll need to fund your wallet using mobile money, a bank, or credit/debit cards. Since this is your first time creating a dollar card with them, the platform will deduct $1 from your wallet. You’ll also have to pay a monthly maintenance fee of $1. Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5. Wirepay Virtual Card Operator Wirepay is an online banking platform founded in 2020 by Miracle
Top 10 Mobile Money Operators For SMEs In Nigeria
In a country like Nigeria, where more than half of its population is living just below the average threshold, a great number of the population indulges in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria has a record 41,543,028 MSMEs as of December 2017. In recent times, a lot of Nigerians, including small and medium enterprises have shifted their financial operations from commercial banks to mobile money operators. In this blog post, we will be looking at the top 10 operators of the list of CBN licensed mobile money operators in Nigeria. These mobile money operators have their strong and weak points but we will be giving a broad overview in this article. What is Mobile Money? In simple terms, mobile money is the use of mobile phones in initiating, authorizing, and confirming transfers. This transfer can be from a current, savings, or checking account. According to the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation, NDIC, and the central bank, there are non-bank-led and bank-led mobile money operators. In this article, we’ll be focusing on the 18 non-bank-led money operators. List of Top Mobile Money Operators in Nigeria in 2024 Are you wondering what is the Best mobile money operator to use for your small and medium enterprise? Do you run a small and medium enterprise in Nigeria and you’re looking for mobile money you can use? Are you looking for mobile operators that you can easily register with on your phone? Then you’re on the right page. Below is a list of mobile money operators for SMEs in Nigeria: Palmpay Palmpay, a Chinese-owned company, was introduced to both Nigeria and Ghana in 2019. It’s a Nigerian popular fintech company that’s licensed by CBN and NDIC and offers divans financial services. Over the years, Palmpay has gained an incredible amount of popularity among Nigeria’s small and medium enterprises. Aside from their seamless transactions, the company has also maintained its efforts in giving incentives and giveaways which consistently attract new users and keep the existing ones. Opay Opay is another Chinese-owned fintech company that is similar to Palmpay. They’re licensed by NDIC and CBN and offer a one-stop platform for all your financial needs. They offer free PoS across the country which makes it easy to deal with other bank users in their terminal. Opay offers several services that make it suitable for small and medium enterprises to use for their financial transactions. Some of the services they offer include seamless transactions without charges, a certain percentage payback on all your transfers the ability to easily pay utility bills, and many more. FirstMonie FirstMonie is a mobile money service from FirstBank, one of the top list of banks in Nigeria. The Firstmonie targets underbanked and unbanked communities where full-scale financial operations are not accessible. With over 80 thousand agents across the country, citizens in “not-so-developed” areas have access to world-class banking. They also target those that have a shop where they deal with hundreds of users in a day. By doing this, the company eases the burden on small and medium enterprises. The owner of the shop gets the money paid into his/her account without looking for a bank to save in while the customer easily transacts without hassle. Pagatech Ltd. Pagatech, commonly called Paga, is another mobile money operator for SMEs in Nigeria. They allow their users to make free financial transactions on their platform. The burden of starting a business from scratch with little money is already enough and Paga tries to make it less burdensome with your transactions. With over 25,000 agents across the country, small and medium enterprise owners can easily make seamless transactions. The company is owned by Tayo Oviosu and is licensed by CBN as a mobile money operator. Abeg Technologies Ltd. Abeg technologies came to the limelight when they sponsored the BBNaija season 6 and created the “Abeg money”. It is a division of Piggytech Global Limited and it is licensed as a mobile money operator. Yes, Abeg was “secretly” acquired by Piggytech, owner of Piggyvest, and the name was changed to “Pocket by Piggyvest”. The app can be used to send and receive funds between two business partners. The name change was also to emphasize the transition of the app to a social commerce platform. Kongapay Technologies Ltd. The popular e-commerce platform Konga has a subsidiary financial technology company, KongaPay. KongaPay is also one of cbn licensed mobile money operators in Nigeria. The company offers reliable and fast payment services in Nigeria, which is what most small and medium enterprises need, no SME wants their money hanging. KongaPay started in 2014 but in 2018, they merged with Yudala which brought about updates and more functionality to the platform. NowNow Digital Systems Limited In 2018, NowNow was founded to bring financial inclusion to all Africans and immediately started their agent onboarding the same here. NowNow offers an “all-inclusive” secured payment platform which is obvious from their partnership with Mastercard on SMEs In 2023. The company has a license from the CBN as a mobile money operator and they have a mobile app through which they run all their operations. You can use their app to send and receive money and pay bills fast and securely, now now! Chams Mobile Limited Chams Mobile Limited is another mobile money operator that has a license from CBN to provide mobile banking services. They do this through a special mobile wallet, KEGOW. This wallet allows for savings and transfers of funds, debit cards, and thrifts. Simply a small and medium enterprise wants. The credibility of the company has grown as it now provides other services like an e-voting service, pension automation, and online verification. Fortis Mobile Money Fortis Mobile Money is another financial platform that has a license from the CBN as a mobile money operator in Nigeria. The company prides itself as a financial institution with an inclusive mindset, especially for places that have little or no access to banks. They help small and medium enterprises to easily and efficiently run their B2B and B2C businesses. Parkway Projects Limited Lastly, we will be looking at Parkway Projects Limited, a CBN-licensed mobile money operator. The company partners with several fintech startups across Africa to
