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Paycode gives Mozambicans a payments lifeline

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 29 Jan 2020
A social grant recipient shows off her payments card.
A social grant recipient shows off her payments card.

Fintech firm Paycode has helped create biometric identities for 18 000 Mozambicans, to facilitate offline payments to social grant recipients in deep rural areas in that country.

Paycode specialises in payment technologies using biometric identity cards that provide digital banking where there is no phone or Internet connectivity. Currently, its technology is being used to pay over four million Africans their government salaries.

Paycode highlights that low connectivity across Africa has historically been an issue for paying social grants, leaving the poorest of the poor even more vulnerable.

To address this, the Johannesburg-based payments firm collaborated with local partner Paycode Mozambique and INAS, Mozambique’s national social services agency, to create the biometric identities.

Rob Bakker, project manager for INAS’s social grants programme, comments: “The combination of biometric authentication and the ability to make payments offline in real-time is a winning solution which meets all the criteria for successfully paying social grants in remote locations.”

“Our focus is enabling financial inclusion through innovative technology that really works, even in the world’s most remote places,” adds Paycode CEO Ralph Pecker.

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