Why Multichoice Is Having A Fintech Moment

According to Craig Coetzer, group executive head for delivery and operations at MultiChoice Africa - which houses the broadcaster's interests outside South Africa - Moment has far greater ambitions than simply being an internally focused service provider.

"Right now, we are busy with the implementation of the initial opportunity to rationalise and simplify our payments landscape, getting the payments ecosystem for MultiChoice South Africa and MultiChoice for the rest of Africa fully integrated into the Moment payments network," Coetzer told TechCentral in a recent interview.

"Once this initial, internally focused implementation is completed, we will essentially have built out one of the deepest and broadest payment networks across the African continent, and that unlocks potential opportunities for other large enterprises that could benefit from leveraging the Moment payments network," he said.

Coetzer said the evolution of financial services in Africa has led to a diversified payments landscape, with digital wallets, cards, cash and other payment methods all playing important roles in facilitating transactions. Moment wants to be a payment aggregator that will allow individuals and businesses to transact without having to worry about whether they are paying from a digital wallet to a bank, or card to a mobile wallet, or any other combination of digital money types.

In its ambitions, Moments is pitting itself against a range of start-ups, including Nigerias Flutterwave, which is expanding its reach in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa as an API application programming interface platform for various types of payment solutions.