Tagattitude, Afrimarket partner on cross-border payments with sound-based solution
Cross-border fund transfers and remittances from workers living abroad to their families in developing regions is a large market. Tagattitude, an electronic transaction provider behind the TagPay platform, has announced a new partnership with a startup called Afrimarket to address one portion of that market: African migrant workers in Europe sending money to their families back home.
With Afrimarket, migrants living outside their home countries will be able to pay school fees and medical bills or provide for basic needs all at a lower fee and using only a cell phone, the companies said.
"The problem is clear and, with the TagPay platform, the solution is simple," said Rania Belkahia, president of Afrimarket, in a statement. "Via the mobile phone, Afrimarket will give migrants an easy and accessible way to allocate funds so that basic needs, health, schooling, and other priorities are met first and foremost."
According to the companies, African migrants send billions of dollars to their families every year but pay fees averaging more than 12 percent, and sometimes the money isn't used for its intended purpose. Afrimarket, on the other hand, will use TagPay's platform to offer dedicated accounts with specific merchants and the ability to send gifts between these accounts from their mobile phones, the companies said.
Tagattitude's solution uses sound-based contactless transaction technology, called Near Sound Data Transfer, to ensure the security and traceability of the Afrimarket service, the companies said. It's not NFC, so it doesn't require any specific hardware or handsets to use — Afrimarket will work on phones that migrants and their families already own.
"This significantly lowers barriers to adoption and operational costs," said Belkahia. "With this technology we will be able to deploy the service and scale it much more quickly and cost effectively than we would be able to if we were using another technology."
Afrimarket currently has a network of about 15 merchants and acceptors in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, the companies said. Merchants include pharmacies, medical facilities and supermarkets.
The service will launch this June and will roll out across West Africa over time. Merchants are equipped with payment terminals and the transaction is secured by an NSDT sound-based signature between the device and the customer’s cell phone.
Read more about money transfer/P2P payments.