Tactile Technologies, a leading player in the sub-Saharan African touch screen and bar code scanning industry, has signed a partnership with start-up ExiPay group in order to bring innovative payment technologies to Tactile clients. ExiPay’s partner Finimo Solutions will provide the software development services to create new merchant-facing payment solutions, while ExiPay Africa will onboard and switch relevant Tactile customers using the tender-agnostic switching capabilities developed and maintained by ExiPay Technologies.
“We are investing in growing our presence in the fast-evolving payment market. We are already present in this ecosystem with our other product sets; however, to make further inroads, we lacked a payment technology partner to complement our hardware and relationships. We have now found that partner in Exipay and Finimo and are hugely excited about opportunities that lie ahead of us. Exipay is a team of highly knowledgeable and experienced people exactly like the Tactile team, and even from a culture point of view there is a great match between the teams,” says Mauro Mercuri, founder of Tactile Technologies.
Alison Johnston, Tactile’s Managing Director, says: “With our extensive market, product knowledge and wide range of payment terminals available, it only made sense to partner with ExiPay for all software development services, to offer a full end-to-end solution to our customers. We have already started working on several projects with ExiPay and look forward to our long-standing relationship.”
“Partnering with Tactile created the perfect fit,” says Helmi de Villiers, ExiPay co-founder and business development executive. “Providing and supporting payment terminals and related technologies is not our core business; we, however, recognise that it is necessary for our business to succeed. Tactile provides this capability and this allows us to focus on doing what we do best, creating payment technologies that close existing gaps and enable our partners and customers to be innovative in the market.”
This partnership creates opportunities for both Tactile and ExiPay across each other’s footprint in sub-Saharan Africa and also opens opportunities to incorporate a broader approach to the payment ecosystem. Both companies are growing their African footprint and this allows them to work together in their common geographies.
Willem Büchner, co-founder of ExiPay and Finimo, says: “ExiPay and Finimo exist to build and support innovative software that enables payments and business platforms to work together, and do so in support of small to medium merchants. We are excited by the opportunity to enable merchants to grow their business and grow the economy.”
“Ultimately, we want to seed a pandemic of employment,” said Büchner.
“We create cutting-edge innovation in support of smaller businesses, but do so with a continuous eye on conforming to industry security standards and meeting or exceeding all compliance requirements,” said Dr Derek Keats, co-founder and group head of risk and compliance. “We also enable smaller businesses to future-proof their payments, because if a payment method exists, we can cover it and do so all on a single device.”
“Furthermore,” said Keats, “with our Finimo engagement, we can enable omnichannel payments and line-of-business applications on any suitable device, eliminating the technology sprawl and enabling businesses to create rich customer engagement.”
ExiPay is payment device and payment type agnostic, allowing payment service providers to bring any brand of terminal and any payment type to their customers in a way that delivers fit-for-purpose capabilities to merchants. The first project with Tactile involves bringing Sunmi payment terminals into the market under the branding of Tactile and ExiPay mutual clients. However, the broader expectation is of collaboration in all areas of payment technology innovation as the partnership matures.
For more info on ExiPay, go to www.exipay.com; for more info on Tactile Technologies, go to www.tactiletechnologies.com.
