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Partnership is a game-changer in enabling contactless acceptance for smaller merchants across the continent
Johannesburg, South Africa, October 2020: phos, the fintech behind the first-ever software-only Point of Sale (SoftPoS), and Stanchion Payment Solutions, a global specialist in payments systems and integration, today announced that they have partnered to help payments processing companies and banks to accelerate time to market with innovative contactless payments acceptance solutions for merchants.
phos and Stanchion are collaborating to help banks and payments companies, in South Africa, Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana and Uganda, to empower their merchants to meet customer demands for a wide range of secure, frictionless payment options, including contactless payments straight from a mobile device. Stanchion brings its proven systems integration and digital payments technology to the partnership.
phos brings its innovative SoftPoS technology, which enables simple contactless payment acceptance for any merchant with an NFC-enabled Android device. At a time when social distancing measures are prevalent and amid heightened safety and hygiene concerns, the phos solution directly addresses the increased reluctance of merchants and consumers to handle cards and cash. The technology is cheaper and simpler than alternative payment solutions, which often require additional hardware or come with long settlement times and/or high fees, and allows a merchant to instantly accept contactless payments on their own mobile device.
Upon registering and once accepted, a merchant can download phos from the Google Play Store and enable all of their Android devices to accept payments from contactless cards or other NFC-enabled devices such as smartphones, tablets, smartwatches or wristbands. Additional payment options will be added to the solution imminently, including Pin-On-Mobile.
Rudolf Smit, Regional Managing Director: Africa at Stanchion, said: “The technology brought to the market through this partnership unlocks a whole new segment of potential merchants and enables new use cases not well served by current solutions. With the ubiquity of mobile phones on the continent and over 85% marketshare of Android, the underpinnings are in place to drastically increase the acceptance of contactless cards and tokenized cards in digital wallets. COVID has drastically accelerated e-commerce in parts of our region and in this use case, phos provides the convenience for consumers to pay with a card on delivery as merchants can now afford to equip their client service teams”.
Deon van Biljon, group product director at Stanchion, said: “We’re seeing rising demand among merchants for contactless payments as consumers increasingly demand frictionless, cashless and cardless options for everyday transactions. We are delighted to partner with phos to deliver a simple and flexible software POS and contactless payments solution – in line with our strategy for helping banks and payments processing companies to accelerate time to market with digital payments innovations.”
Brad Hyett, CEO of phos, added: “Our partnership with Stanchion brings next-gen payment technology to payments companies and banks that wish to grow their merchant base and increase retention. It offers them a simple solution for contactless payments acceptance that can be easily deployed at scale as part of their wider digital payments framework. We look forward to collaborating closely with Stanchion to exceed merchants’ and payment processors’ expectations when it comes to innovative and engaging payments experiences.”
