African fintech firm to enhance uptake of Wechat pay, Alipay

NAIROBI - Pan-African payment company Wapi Pay said on Tuesday that it plans to accelerate uptake of Wechat Pay and Alipay in the African continent in order to boost Sino-Africa trade.

Paul Ndichu, executive director of Wapi Pay, told Xinhua in Nairobi that its proprietary payment gateway connection has already been expanded to seven African countries.

"Our plan is to connect a total of 24 African countries to China in the next two years in order to provide seamless digital finance transactions across the two regions," Ndichu said during the Afro-Asia FinTech Festival.

Wapi Pay said that its fintech solutions, which took four years to develop, reduce the cost of making payments between Africa and China by 70 percent and take only 30 seconds as compared to bank transfers that take more than three days.

"We thus enable even small-scale traders to make payments to Chinese merchants at an affordable rate," he added.

Wapi Pay's fintech solutions are currently business-to-business solutions and the firm is exploring options of enable peer-to-peer payments.