Access Bank SA turns to Network International to deliver growing payments offering

Meagan Rabe (Access Bank) and Chris Wood (Network International).

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Access Bank SA has appointed Network International SA as its payments partner, handling all its payments processing as part of a growing relationship between the two companies. 

The partnership was announced on the back of a competitive RFP process issued in March this year. Network International now assists Access Bank SA with its debit and credit cards, e-commerce and tokenisation offerings, with more services planned.

“We continue to rely on Network International to partner with us on our digitisation journey and growth in retail banking in South Africa and across the continent. Network has already worked closely with us to implement our current debit card system and we have been impressed with their partnership approach to both delivery and the commercials,” comments Meagan Rabe, Executive Head: Retail and Alliance Banking at Access Bank South Africa.

Nigeria’s Access Bank acquired Grobank (previously Bank of Athens), last year to trade locally as Access Bank South Africa. At the time of the acquisition, the bank said it would initially focus on entry-level to middle-market consumer banking, providing a transactional account with a debit card to individuals. This is now expanding to be a lending-led strategy with a broad spectrum of lending products, including credit cards.

The move away from cash continues and card growth in South Africa is on the rise. Research firm, Global Data, is expecting card payments for 2022 to show growth of 8.2% to reach ZAR1.54 trillion. What’s more, Mastercard’s New Payments Index 2022 found that 95% of South Africans have used at least one emerging digital payment method over the last year.

“We are particularly proud of the work we have done with Access Bank SA as we deepen our partnership across the continent. Delivering rapid innovation to financial institutions while minimising the risk and costs of the deployments puts banks and other institutions in a unique position to dynamically react to customer needs without having to overhaul their infrastructure or expand their tech departments. Access Bank’s goals make us the perfect delivery partner,” comments Chris Wood, Regional Managing Director, Southern Africa and PALOPS at Network International.

Looking ahead, the leadership of Access Bank SA said they saw opportunity in business banking in the local market and that the bank aimed to provide a full-service transactional banking offering for organisations with an annual revenue between R5 million and R750 million. Future lending products in traditional trade finance and structured commodity finance would also be considered.

“We believe that relying on technology experts like Network International will give us the ability to design and deploy services our customers need and want at a faster rate than our competitors. The more than 3 million registered customers who are part of the African diaspora living and working in South Africa have a strong appetite for fast, simple, cost-effective banking solutions and through partnerships like these we are able to help millions of people realise their aspirations through meaningful financial inclusion,” Rabe concludes.