Egypt’s MoneyHash partners Ozow to strengthen SA’s digital payments ecosystem

Egyptian payment orchestration startup MoneyHash has announced a new partnership with Ozow, a leading South African fintech and payments provider, to expand access to local online payment methods in South Africa.

Founded in 2021 by Nader Abdelrazik and Mustafa Eid, MoneyHash has developed a proprietary payment orchestration platform and end-to-end payment operating system. After a successful beta launch in 2022, attracting key players in the region such as Foodics, Rain, and Tamatem, the startup launched its enterprise suite last October, targeting large enterprises.

The startup, which secured US$5.2 million in pre-Series A funding early last year, has been expanding its international operations recently, with key partnerships agreed in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Bahrain and Oman.

Meanwhile Ozow, which rebranded from i-Pay in April 2019 as it zeroed in on assisting SMEs with payments, enables millions of merchants and consumers with easy, fast and secure alternative payment solutions, including QR codes, point of sale, e-commerce, e-billing and peer-to-peer payments. It raised a US$48 million Series B funding round in late-2021.

The partnership between the two fintech startups aims to expand access to local online payment methods in South Africa through MoneyHash’s unified payment infrastructure. Through the integration, businesses using MoneyHash can connect to Ozow through their existing MoneyHash integration, reducing the need to build and maintain a separate technical connection.

This enables merchants to expand the South Africa payment methods available to their customers while managing their wider payment stack through a single orchestration layer.

South Africa has developed one of the continent’s most sophisticated digital payments markets, with businesses increasingly looking beyond traditional card payments to offer consumers a wider range of payment options. As the number of online payment methods in South Africa continues to expand, businesses can find themselves managing multiple providers, technical integrations, reporting systems, and operational processes.

“Having worked within South Africa’s payments ecosystem, I’ve seen both how quickly the market has evolved and the complexity businesses face as they scale their payment operations,” said Hwan Lee, regional director for Africa at MoneyHash. “There is a significant opportunity for orchestration to connect strong local payment infrastructure with businesses that want to grow within South Africa and across the continent.”

Payment orchestration helps simplify this complexity. Rather than separately integrating and maintaining connections with multiple payment processors in South Africa, merchants can use an orchestration layer such as MoneyHash to connect to and manage different providers and payment methods through one infrastructure.

The Ozow integration adds another important local capability to this ecosystem, allowing MoneyHash merchants operating in or expanding into South Africa to access Ozow while managing their broader payment operations through MoneyHash.

The partnership comes as Ozow marks 12 years in South Africa’s digital payments market, bringing more than a decade of experience in the country’s evolving digital payment landscape.

“Over the past 12 years, we’ve seen South Africa’s digital payments landscape evolve significantly, alongside growing demand from businesses for simpler and more flexible ways to accept payments.” said Catherine Korsten, chief growth officer at Ozow. “Our partnership with MoneyHash creates another avenue for merchants to access Ozow, while reducing the complexity of integrating and managing multiple payment solutions.”

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