Paystack Partners Truecaller to Ensure Secure Online Payments for African Businesses

Nigerian payment firm, Paystack, has just partnered with Truecaller to enable merchants in Africa perform secure online payments using Truecaller’s Software Development Kit (SDK).

Paystack is one of Nigeria’s largest Fintech startups that processes nearly 20% of all online transactions in Africa’s largest economy. The startup plans on making use of Truecaller’s mobile identity offering Truecaller SDK to verify the identity of Starter Business merchants by verifying their phone number to authenticate payments made on the platform.

How Would this Partnership Work?

Prior to this partnership, merchants who wanted to accept payments with Paystack had to have a corporate bank account or company registration certificate. And since a large number of businesses in Nigeria are not registered, it has hindered a lot of legitimate unregistered businesses from seeing the benefits of online payments.

However, with the introduction of Truecaller’s SDK as a verification system, several prospective Starter Business merchants would now be able to activate their businesses on Paystack using their phone numbers.

We're thrilled to announce that we've partnered with @Truecaller to strengthen identity verification of Paystack merchants, and also to provide a powerful new tool to Paystack merchants who want to confirm the mobile-based identity of their own customers! https://t.co/Is1jZafisQ

— Paystack (@paystack) March 19, 2018

Also, In addition to using Truecaller as part of the merchant verification, Paystack will also be introducing Truecaller as a verification option for local developers and startups who want to verify the identity of their own customers on the Paystack’s developer platform. Paystack which already makes three verification options available to developers – Verification of BVN of customers, verification of bank account details, and also verification of card details. Truecaller will now be a fourth, new verification option.

What Benefits Would this Partnership Bring?

This partnership would help grow African businesses, as seamless payments would be made across Africa online, and in turn improving the digital payment ecosystem.

Truecaller Partners with @Paystack to Enable More African Businesses to Accept Online Payments https://t.co/SgSmz8wxFY pic.twitter.com/4ABhnZpAL1

— Truecaller (@Truecaller) March 19, 2018

Also, since customers have control over their privacy and security while using Paystack and Truecaller, they may reject or accept the prompts to share their info with the merchant.The impact of this will definitely create more trust in the payments flow for African businesses especially in a low-trust environment such as Nigeria.

Over 50 million Africans use Truecaller, and the app has helped helped Nigerian users block over 13 million calls and 25 million spam SMS, monthly.