Supporting South African Fintechs to accelerate their scale-up

IDEMIA launches Global Fintech Accelerator Card programme dedicated to support fintechs in South Africa in expediting the process of cardholder onboarding and card issuance

According to data, fintechs continue to attract the lion’s share of venture capitalist funding. In South Africa, reports put the figure anywhere between 25-30%, meaning fintechs in the country absorbed almost 80 million USD from a total of 259 million USD in VC funding that flowed into South Africa. Among the attraction of fintechs were their relatively young operating age and the fact that they have the potential to scale up and achieve profitability[1].

IDEMIA, the global leader in Augmented Identity, has launched its Global Fintech Accelerator Card programme, designed to enable nascent fintech companies to accelerate when scaling up their operations.

The Global Fintech Accelerator Card programme provides companies with the tools they need for rapid processing from cardholder onboarding to card issuance, thanks to IDEMIA’s worldwide network of personalisation centres and its Common Personalisation System (CPS). IDEMIA’s CPS allows all our financial institutions customers, including fintechs, to ease the management of a consistent portfolio made of digital and physical payment means services. The 30 IDEMIA service centres are supported by CPS to allow for instant and secure card profile developments to be transferred and reused. This allows rapid expansion for fintech companies and gives them the ability to fully differentiate their products in the market. In South Africa, IDEMIA operates a state-of-the-art personalization center in Linbro Park, Johannesburg.

Highlighting their local fintech capabilities is the recent partnership between IDEMIA and TymeBank, which sees this digital bank leverage IDEMIA’s in-country presence and card technology solutions to onboard approximately 120,000 customers per month.

In addition to the accelerator programme, IDEMIA provides fintechs with insights into how to leverage solutions such as IDEMIA metal cards, biometric cards (F.CODE), cards with a dynamic security code (MOTION CODE) and recycled cards (GREENPAY) to realise a rich portfolio of customer card access and experiences.

Coupled with IDEMIA’s digital assets, fintechs will be able to blend the physical card with digital services such as mobile identity proofing for customer on-boarding and IDEMIA Card Connect, a way to activate a card or provide secure customer authentication by tapping the contactless card on a phone. IDEMIA’s digital assets also enable fintechs to enrich their mobile banking apps with new payment features via digital cards, reinventing the customer journey for both in-person and remote payments.