Toyota, InTouch Partner for Digital Payment in West Africa
Toyota Tsusho Corporation through its group company CFAO SAS and Mobility 54 Investment SAS announced an investment in InTouch SAS, a company developing digital payment services mainly for West African countries.
In a statement, the company said the existing shareholders and strategic partners of InTouch, a major French energy company TOTAL Energies and a major French digital payment service company Worldline SA have also decided to engage in their additional investment in InTouch.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, Toyota said in the statement that it is deemed that only about 40% of the adult population holds personal banking accounts due to a series of factors; notably, the lack of automatic teller machines (ATMs) account maintenance and transaction costs.
On the other hand, it said approximately 80% of the adult population owns mobile phones and has access to digital payment services enabling remittances and withdrawals via mobile phone terminals without having a bank account.
“Digital payment services are used in a variety of industries such as retail, utility, and mobile phone companies and are expected to further grow in the region”, it added.
InTouch, a digital payment aggregator integrating 230 digital payment services into a single payment platform such as a large number of mobile money brands, insurance services and online bill payments etc.
The statement reads that the company is currently operating in 10 countries -mainly in West Africa- and providing services like TouchPay in more than 30,000 locations, including 1,200 of Total’s gas stations.
InTouch plans to expand its business throughout Africa by collaborating with Toyota Tsusho Group.
Under the partnership with InTouch, Toyota Tsusho Group will actively promote the digitalization of its payment operations across all business segments including automobiles, healthcare, consumer goods, etc. throughout Africa — contributing to improving the convenience for its valued customers in Africa.
In addition, Toyota said this investment will further accelerate deployments of digital payments in sectors such as public transportation, logistics, and automobile finance, which are traditionally dominated by cash transactions.
It added that Toyota Tsusho Group through CFAO and Mobility 54 will continue to invest in companies developing innovative technologies and services for Africa.
The group is pursuing to help solve the social and industrial challenges in Africa by supporting the expansion of innovative partners’ businesses and creating strong synergies between our group and the partners.
A digital payment aggregator is an intermediary that aggregates and processes multiple digital payments such as mobile money, QR code/bar code payments, and credit card payments between general consumers and businesses. Toyota group said by using a digital payment aggregator, businesses can flexibly respond to the diverse payment needs of consumers.
Toyota, InTouch Partner for Digital Payment in West Africa
