Mastercard and Boost, a B2B commerce platform, have signed a collaborative agreement to provide digital payment wallets and embedded supply chain finance to empower and expand small businesses in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector in Africa.
The collaboration aims to drive growth for small businesses in high-growth markets, including Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Senegal. It will also provide support to distributors, wholesalers, and retailers in the FMCG sector, all of whom will be provided with Boost’s innovative platform as a service to access essential working capital and Mastercard’s acceptance solutions.
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The strategic collaboration aims to provide financial institutions with the capability to issue digital payment solutions and expand into the micro-retail space, whilst empowering merchants to digitize payments and access working capital.
Folasade Femi-Lawal, Country Manager and Area Business Head, West Africa, Mastercard, stated that the collaboration reiterates Mastercard’s commitment to including MSMEs in the digital ecosystem.
“This collaboration underscores our dedication to advance MSME growth in emerging markets and foster economic growth and financial inclusion through innovative digital solutions,” she stated.
According to her, the collaboration with Boost will move Mastercard a step closer to realizing its goal of bringing a total of one billion people and 50 MSMEs into the digital economy by 2025.
“By digitizing payments and creating a track record for their transactions, we will enable more MSMEs to access credit facilities and scale their businesses through the delivery of integrated digital payment solutions and supply chain finance,” Femi-Lawal stated.
Accordingly, Mastercard will enable Boost to offer digital payment and credit solutions to MSMEs customers across their current and future markets, amplifying the company’s impact whilst contributing to Mastercard’s mission of fostering an inclusive digital economy.
“We are thrilled to enter into this scaling partnership with Mastercard in pursuit of Boost’s mission to enable small businesses to thrive in the digital economy, to create sustainable jobs and income.
“We have already proven that Boost’s model can scale widely across, and deeply within, emerging markets by building strong partnerships to digitize end-to-end supply chains between manufacturers and point-of-sale retailers,” Mike Quinn, co-founder and CEO, Boost stated.
