BPC Banking Technologies has appointed a new business
development executive for Africa as part of its expansion plans in
the continent. Duygu Tavan speaks to Daryl Berg, managing director,
BPC MEA and Richard Phillimore, executive vice president, BPC
Banking Technologies
Go deeper with GlobalData
BPC has appointed a head of business
development in Africa for the first time ever. This is part of the
vendor’s African growth ambitions.
BPC Banking Technologies appointed a business
development executive for Africa as part of its expansion plans in
the continent. Patrick Mowatt, whose last position was CEO of Loita
Transaction Services, is going to head BPC’s business and growth in
Nigeria, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Ghana.
Loita Transaction Services owns Kenswitch from Kenya, EFT
Corporation, Zamlink from Zambia and Zimswitch from Zimbabwe.
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By GlobalDataHis background in the African payments industry makes him an
“industry expert with extensive management and business development
experience in the banking, telecommunication and retail
industries,” the official announcement letter said.
For Daryl Berg, managing director, BPC MEA,
Mowatt’s background, which includes extensive management and
business development experience in the banking, telecommunication
and retail industries will prove “invaluable” to BPC.
Richard
Phillimore
Until last year in April, Russian open-systems
payment provider BPC dealt with its African business from Europe.
Then, in April 2010, BPC appointed Daryl Berg as the managing
director for Middle East and Africa to fully commit to a market
that within its borders offers various opportunities for payments
system providers to grow.
Although this is not the first time BPC enters
the African market (it signed a joint venture deal with Nedbank in
2009, Afriland First Bank and Consolidated Bank of Kenya in 2011)
it is the first time the vendor has continent-based executives to
capitalise on the fertile African payments soil.
Daryl Berg
High growth potential
Nigeria is one of the top three countries for
the vendor, but it sits behind Ethiopia and Angola.
“We are taking a much more focused
approach in Africa. I joined in April last year and since then we
bolstered up our team and our strategic partnerships in the
region,” says Berg.
BPC has identified high growth
potential markets in Africa. Nigeria is right up there purely
because of the size of the market – the population, banking
industry and potential for growth, says Phillimore and
Berg.
East Africa, too, promises valuable
markets. Phillimore and Berg single out Ethiopia in particular.
They argue that while it has lacked the payments
infrastructure of other African countries, banks are now
starting to build their capacity.
Other countries to look out for
are Mozambique, Angola, Botswana and Namibia, as well as a
continued focus on South Africa, they say.
SmartVista for Africa
BPC will market its SmartVista payment
platform in Africa. It includes an end-to-end payment system,
switching, card management, card issuance and production, account
management, fraud detection, merchant management and settlement.
Phillimore and Berg argue this is a “unique offering” because there
is a lack of aggregated payment platforms such as those offered by
BPC, they say.
“This product is very sophisticated, but also
very simply. It has been developed over the last 12-15 years. It is
advanced in that it has a multitude of capabilities. But if a bank
needs to address a specific part of their business, and needs a
simple implementation, we only provide the part of the SmartVista
suit that is required,” they say.
Been here before
This is not the first time BPC has gone into
Africa. It entered the South African market in 2009 through a joint
venture with Nedbank. The deal with Nedbank was the first for the
vendor to implement its SmartVista solution in Southern Africa.
The venture focused on building a
fully-functional ATM device handling service that could be used for
expanding the ATM network of Johannesburg-based Vela ATM. BPC’s
role was to connect the host (Vela) to Nedbank by implementing its
SmartVista solution into the ATM device handler.
In May last year, BPC inked a deal with
Afriland First Bank to implement its SmartVista solution as a new
e-payments platform for the banking group. The first
implementations commenced in Cameroon (and in Geneva, where the
bank is headquartered). In Cameroon, BPC was signed up to support
the bank’s certification processes for Visa and MasterCard issued
cards.
In Geneva, BPC implemented a central switch
through, the SmartSwitch product, which is part of the SmartVista
suit, to drive online transaction switching and routing.
Then BPC added the Consolidated Bank of Kenya
(CBK) to its African customer base in November. The deal was signed
in co-operation with BPC’s local partner Tracom Services.
CBK previously outsourced its payments
business, and is now in the process of migrating its card
processing business to SmartVista.
