Author: Issa Keshek, regional manager, Middle-East & Africa

It has been an eventful period for the team in the Middle-East & Africa with a number of standout moments and activities I’d like to share.

Seamless East Africa

Following the success at Seamless Middle East – the largest payments conference in the region drawing active participation from banks, processors, regulators and solution providers, we attended  the Seamless East Africa summit in Nairobi on September 3rd. Titled the ‘Future of Payments, Banking & Fintech’ it is the most prominent forum for the payments industry in the region. We were thrilled to have been part of it at such an important time for the East-Africa in terms of innovation of services & evolution of alternative channels.

The summit’s focus on leading-edge payments technology brought together world-class financial organisations and thought-leaders to discuss key and emerging trends in the region, as well as the constraints and frustrations deployers, banks and processors currently face globally.

East Africa as a region has skipped a technology generation and is unburdened by the many years of legacy technology that organisations in other parts of the world now must negotiate with. In a nutshell, the area is poised to deploy newer, better technology supported by organisations that understand 21-century payments. Ultimately, it is ready to not only recognise but lead the way in transforming the role of the ATM, something we are excited to be able to support through our cloud-native product strategy.

As well as sponsoring this key summit, our COO Jim Tomaney hosted a roundtable session designed to stimulate conversion about how innovation in technology can drive the narrative around ATM and payments technology forward.

ATMIA Summit, South Africa

Naturally, we have a corporate relationship with ATMIA; we have been particularly active with them around the region through multiple initiatives. For instance, in late August,, we sponsored and attended the ATM Industry Association’s (ATMIA) South Africa Banking and Payments Industry Summit in Johannesburg which focused on the future of the payments industry across the region.

We have a long-standing relationship with ATMIA who we seek to keep abreast of our developments in the region and our latest thinking around 21-century payments technology by regularly participating in their monthly forums and were delighted to be there. 

As I discussed in my blog ahead of the summit, South Africa is ready for ATM innovation with significant growth in EFT and card payments over the last eight years. With greater political interest in financial inclusion, innovative start-ups have an opportunity to show what they can do.

To address this, we presented, ‘Modernising payments processing with next-generation switching platforms’ where we outlined how our cloud-native strategy and capacity to co-exist with legacy systems can pave a new way forward.

Our activity and more importantly, the feedback we’ve received from industry players confirms to us that the region is on the cusp of a technological revolution in the ATM space to Next Gen ATM Software.

We have also taken a similar initiative back in May 2018 when we participated with ATMIA’s summit in Cape Town where leading merchants, retailers, Payment switch & self-service providers were present.

Where next?

With a host of activities planned for 2019, including ATMIA’s Middle East conference in June 2019, we are hugely looking forward to the period ahead. In the meantime, stay tuned as we are getting ready to announce some big news before the year is out.