Youtap, a global provider of contactless mobile payments and financial services software, has launched a QR code solution and smartphone apps for mobile money services in Africa and Asia.
Youtap’s solution enables customer-initiated or merchant-initiated QR code payments for smartphones and smart point-of-sale devices.
The solution conforms to the BharatQR industry standard developed by Bharat, Mastercard and Visa. Youtap’s apps can be white-labelled and branded with the logo and colours of the mobile money service.
The new solution gives any merchant or small business owner with a smartphone the potential to download Youtap’s Merchant App, self-register, and start accepting mobile money payments.
Likewise, any subscriber with a smartphone can download the Youtap Pay App and start making payments. Merchants who do not own a smartphone could be provided a printed QR code to accept mobile money.
Youtap’s QR code solution enables a full range of mobile money transactions, including cash-in and cash-out transactions, airtime top-ups, bill payments and in-store payments.
QR codes can also be used to give back change when a customer uses cash.
These apps demonstrate that FinTech has advanced to astounding heights with payments and transactions being made extremely easy via mobile devices. The availability of loans through a quick verification and disbursement mechanism is another example of FinTech applications. A person who is undergoing a financial crisis can easily get financial help through lending apps backed by banks nowadays. The use of smartphones and financial apps has made it easier for the common person to carry out a digital transaction or secure a loan.
A key reason behind FinTech’s success has been the reliability and security of payment apps. To ensure that, these payment companies tend to use secure and safe payment gateways for transactions. Typically, these types of payment apps are legally bound to payment gateways (with the help of a SaaS Lawyer), so you’re likely to be compensated in the event of a financial glitch.
Smartphone penetration across emerging markets is increasing significantly. This is because businesses prefer taking their operations online. Nowadays, one can find mobile applications that can help companies manage their business by tracking the work process and the time taken (you can find out more here about such apps) to complete a particular job. Additionally, this helps avoid all the unnecessary paperwork. When mobile applications can fulfill business and individual needs efficiently, it is no surprise to see a massive increase in smartphone penetration. Recently MTN Group published statistics on the growth of smartphones across its operating companies, including South Africa (15%), Nigeria (36%), Ghana (64%) and Côte d’Ivoire (100%).
According to the GSMA, an association that represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, smartphone adoption is expected to reach 50 per cent by the end of 2018.
In Asia, where smartphone adoption is high, QR codes are already widely used for payments.
