iKaaz, NFC based payment startup from Bangalore, expands to East Africa

Bangalore-based startup iKaaz offers an innovative mobile payments platform for enterprises in emerging markets to enable them to extend cashless transactions to their customers.

A few months ago, we reported the entry of iKaaz to the rapidly growing African market with the launch of its innovative tap and pay offering in Nigeria. This cloud-based payments platform helps banks to quickly come onboard and offer this innovative solution to their customers.

iKaaz expanding to Kenya

Last week, iKaaz expanded its services to Kenya. Announcing a strategic alliance with Family Bank, one of Kenya’s leading banks, iKaaz, along with its local partner EDGE financial systems, will bring the revolutionary Tap & Pay solution to Family Bank’s customers. Family Bank customers can now expect to move faster through checkout at retail stores as well as be able to use the same payment tags to pay at transportation check points.

iKaaz CEO Soma Sundaram, says, “Kenya is the home ground of mobile payments in Africa. At present, Kenya is gearing towards the next generation of mobile payments initiative, which is NFC powered Tap & Pay based model.”

NFC powered Tap & Pay based payments is the next generation of mobile payments, which rides on top of the existing mobile payments ecosystem, so it is logically the best move for iKaaz to take up some market share in Kenya. Tap & Pay allows the merchants and consumers to easily transact rather than entering all the complicated payment details in their mobile phone each time they transact.

Chibuzo Ene, the Co-founder of EDGE financial systems (EFSL), has major plans for NFC contactless payments in Kenya. “We are delighted to be involved with iKaaz’s expansion plans for Kenya and extremely excited to get an endorsement of Family Bank, a prestigious institution. We are true believers of NFC and we are sure it will play a huge role in the payments space for many years to come.”

“Kenya is a global leader in mobile payments and we are extremely encouraged to see that our Tap & Pay solution will play an integral role within the Kenyan mobile payments ecosystem,” said Soma Sundaram, Founder & CEO of iKaaz.

iKaaz provides a comprehensive suite of end-to-end mobile payments solutions that includes a feature rich mobile wallet, an innovative – yet cost effective mPOS (mobile Point of Sale) and a robust payments platform that allows banks, operators and financial institutions to extend mobile payments to their customers in a fast, secure and cost effective manner.

Consumers use NFC tags that are linked to the mobile wallet similar to a debit card that is linked to bank accounts; while merchants on the other hand, will use iKaaz NFC mPOS to complete transactions all of which are processed by iKaaz’s robust payments platform.

In addition to NFC support, iKaaz platform supports SMS-based payment transactions along with a mobile app. The iKaaz platform is already processing millions of transactions.