Recent data shows that traditional payment methods are no longer meeting the needs of Africa’s consumers, who demand faster, more convenient, and more secure ways pay. Also, businesses face long settlement times, high fees of up to 3.5 percent in South Africa, chargebacks from card transactions, as well as high rates of fraud, impacting their ability to grow.
To bridge this payment gap, Stitch, payments and data application programming interface fintech recently launched LinkPay– a linked-account payments product that enables variable recurring payments.
“With LinkPay, Stitch can enable businesses to offer a more frictionless and secure payments experience, making it easier than ever for their customers to pay – and saving on costs. As a result, businesses will see higher conversion rates, a reduction in costs and ultimately a more convenient experience for their users,” Junaid Dadan, Chief Product Officer at Stitch, said.
With LinkPay, businesses in South Africa and Nigeria can accept secure, one-click payments directly from a user’s financial account. According to the company, the payment experience is as convenient as that of a tokenised card, but comes without high fees or chargebacks.
Stitch is an API fintech company that helps businesses launch, optimise and scale financial products in Africa. With its solutions, it reduces the effort required for businesses to connect to their users’ financial accounts, enable instant, secure payments and payouts, and access financial data.
LinkPay can be integrated alongside Stitch Payouts and Financial Data products to enable a complete linked-account journey, including verified payments, refunds, and withdrawals.
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Stitch says it will be addressing the challenges associated with payment by manual bank transfer which is onerous and high-friction, and repeat transactions requiring consumers to log in and initiate payments uniquely every time.
This includes a more cost-effective, frictionless, and secure payments product that tokenises user financial accounts to enable one-click payments known as Instant EFT in South Africa and pay by bank in Nigeria.
One-click payments for returning users
Returning users can choose to link their financial accounts as a default payment method by logging in via Stitch once, and can top up or checkout in one click every time after – no-repeat login required
Link and pay later
Users can pre-link an account and come back anytime to make a payment. This is useful for products such as scan-to-pay apps, investment offerings, and any fintech application that involves repeat transactions from the same primary financial account.
Verified payments: Once a user’s account is linked, LinkPay can be combined with Stitch Financial Data to reference account details such as name or ID for verified payments with reduced risk of fraud. In addition, balances, and transactions history can also be checked for ‘smart’ payments that fail less.
Seamless payouts over API
Combining LinkPay plus Stitch Payouts enables users to receive refunds or make withdrawals to the same verified account used for a pay-in.
Core use cases for Stitch LinkPay include Fintechs which involve returning users for digital wallets, investment and savings apps, scan to pay solutions and more can make fast, secure deposits, pay for services and withdraw funds whenever they need, via the same verified financial account
Marketplaces and platforms
Users can link a bank account to their ride-hailing, delivery, or marketplace profile for quick checkouts, and suppliers can get paid same-day, as well as e-commerce businesses. For e-commerce businesses that enable logged-in checkouts, returning users can pay with one click via their saved payment method.
