Visa has partnered with credit infrastructure firm _able and pan-African payments company Onafriq to expand the Visa Flex Credential across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The collaboration is meant to help financial institutions layer credit experiences onto existing prepaid and debit products.
The Visa Flex Credential allows issuers to offer multiple funding sources through a single card. Financial institutions could extend credit access through debit and prepaid credentials customers already hold, without issuing a separate product.
For _able, the partnership extends the reach of its existing platform, which already supports banking and mobile money deployments, into card-based credit use cases.
The company said the aim is to help financial institutions deliver credit and savings experiences through one unified technology stack rather than multiple disconnected systems.
Onafriq will handle payment processing for eligible prepaid card implementations and connect participating institutions to its pan-African payments network, which reaches roughly one billion mobile wallets and 500 million bank accounts across the continent.
Debit and prepaid card adoption has grown steadily across African markets in recent years, even as access to formal credit products has lagged.
The partners say Visa Flex Credential offers issuers a way to build on customer relationships and payment credentials already in place, rather than starting credit access from scratch.
Jad Abbas, Co-Founder and CFO of _able, said most consumers in the region already hold a card but few can access credit through it.
“Visa Flex Credential turns that gap into a channel, and _able provides the infrastructure to activate it responsibly and at scale,” he said.
Godfrey Sullivan, Senior Vice President and Head of Products and Solutions for CEMEA at Visa, said the credential gives financial institutions a new way to offer flexible payment experiences.
He said partnerships with firms like _able and Onafriq help issuers explore new paths to broadening financial access.
Christian Bwakira, Group Chief Commercial Officer at Onafriq, said the company’s network is built to make borders matter less across Africa’s payments landscape.
He added that supporting Visa Flex on prepaid cards through its companion card platform extends that reach into a new category of credit access.
Financial institutions across the CEMEA region can now explore deploying Visa Flex Credential on their existing card portfolios through _able’s platform, which is designed to work across multiple processing environments as adoption grows.
_able is headquartered in Dubai, with an operational hub in Nairobi, a market and innovation hub in Dar es Salaam, and a technology and intelligence hub in Pune.
Download the FREE Kaspersky Next Enterprise Security Guide here to explore the complete framework for simplifying security operations and building cyber resilience.
Go to TECHTRENDSKE.co.ke for more tech and business news from the African continent and across the world.
Follow us on WhatsApp, Telegram, Twitter, and Facebook, or subscribe to our weekly newsletter to ensure you don’t miss out on any future updates. Send tips to editorial@techtrendsmedia.co.ke
