In a move to expand its service offering, East African payment service solutions firm, Direct Pay Online (DPO Group) is expanding to Swaziland and Mozambique after recently opening offices in Lesotho and Zimbabwe.
The Kenyan headquartered payments and billing firm, which offers merchants multiple modes of payments, says will be further extending into the Southern Africa region as part of its expansion plans. The company says it will also be rolling up its Southern African payment service providers (PSPs) into one consolidated brand of DPO PayGate.
In August 2017, DPO Group announced its acquisition of PayGate South Africa and Virtual Card Services (VCS) South Africa. The deal followed its previous acquisitions of PayThru and VCS Botswana and Namibia.
As the firm prepares to establish itself in Swaziland and Mozambique, it says it aims to revamp its payment solutions by providing merchants with a consolidated DPO PayGate, which already supports payments for tens of thousands of merchants in the region.
"PayGate will be adopting the DPO Group brand identity, but the real story is the collective benefit we now offer our customers. Our objective is making it possible for our merchants to get paid anywhere, anytime, presenting their customer with as many payment options as possible. We are able to provide our merchants with an array of local and international payment methods through a single integration.
"Previously companies looking to access customers on the continent had to sign up with different payments service providers in each region and each country where they did business. Now organisations can reach their customers in more than 14 African countries through a single integration into the DPO Group, via DPO PayGate South Africa," explains Peter Harvey, MD of DPO PayGate.
The single integration offers multiple payment methods, which will be available for start-up merchants or enterprise merchants through DPO's PayWeb or PayHost integration channels, adds the company.
While the company says the VCS brand will be discontinued, current VCS merchants will not experience any changes and will also benefit from the added clout of the new DPO PayGate offering.
In the past year, the DPO Group has established legal entities in more than 14 countries throughout Africa. In November, the group also opened new offices in Johannesburg, which will be the customer service hub for the Southern region, augmenting its existing Cape Town headquarters.
"DPO PayGate clients now have access to a complete bouquet of payment offerings, including card, instant EFT, and app-based payments such as Zapper and MasterPass. We offer a one-stop solution to all organisations, from start-up to enterprise. We take away the pain of multiple platform integrations and have a single sign-up agreement with a number of banks. The power of DPO PayGate lies in our ability to quickly and simply take organisations from sign-up to revenue generation, anywhere in Africa," says Harvey.
Last year, DPO secured an investment of $5 million (R70 million) from UK-based private equity fund Apis Partners.
Through the funding, the group said at the time it aimed to improve its payment service levels and technology for the SA market and the rest of the continent by implementing new solutions such as fraud prevention, risk management and quick response codes, among others.
"For the DPO Group, South Africa is an important market, which presents its own unique challenges and opportunities," says Eran Feinstein, DPO Group CEO.
"DPO PayGate will manage this large market by utilising high-end technology, engaging and leading a highly skilled team, and maintaining the highest standards in the industry."
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