Author: Dean Takahashi / Source: VentureBeat
Solar energy is the key to getting power to many parts of Africa, but it is expensive to implement and often difficult for individuals to purchase. So global payments firm Mastercard has teamed up with solar energy company M-KOPA Solar, banks, and mobile network operators to enable payments and commerce for people who don’t have access to banks.
The alliance will enable consumers to pay for solar energy as they use it.About 625 million people in sub-Saharan African and 1.2 billion people worldwide have little or no access to electricity.
“We view access to energy as a basic human right,” said Kiki Del Valle, senior vice president of commerce at Mastercard, in an interview with VentureBeat. “Mastercard is trying to tackle the problem by bringing more modernized, reliable energy to more people. It’s part of our inclusion initiative, as energy access plays a critical role in enabling health, gender equality, economic opportunity, security, biological sustainability, and a lot of other key measures of human development. That is why we are interested in solar.”
Mastercard unveiled its plans for a new kind of digital payment at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. The company and its partners will enable M-KOPA to extend its pay-as-you-go program without worrying about how customers will make payments.
The program is an easy way to bring basic utilities to remote and rural areas. But without easy payment solutions, it is hard to implement and scale. Mastercard is using its Masterpass QR codes, an open and interoperable technology that provides people with any type of mobile phone the ability to safely make purchases without using cash or a plastic card.
“Picture today’s model, with women or men walking kilometers to go to a store,” Del Valle said. “They buy a kerosene jug. They pay cash. Then they walk home. They use it for lighting or cooking or whatever. That is their experience today.”
“What we’re actually doing, as a QR merchant — M-KOPA will be able to access payments to millions of consumers. We embed a QR code within the device itself, minimizing the cost of the hardware for that device and making…
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