TrustPay Gears Up to Build a Unified Front in Mobile Payments

Mobile payments is a market that’s rapidly building up. A steadily increasing number of competitors, as well as a steadily increasing number of places that accept such payment systems, is helping to ensure that mobile has all it needs to be a market with lots of growth potential. But as is commonly the case with a market with rapid growth, it can get a bit confusing.

Figuring out just which payment system to use, and just who accepts said platform, can be a tall order. This is no different in Africa, where a variety of firms are entering the space, and TrustPay is looking to bring the lot together into a more unified front.

Perhaps one of the biggest problems faced by the African mobile payments space is that there are several firms involved, and some firms actually stop working when they butt up against another country’s border.

With TrustPay however, firms can actually work better together, being connected into a central and cohesive nexus of sorts.

That’s no mean feat given how many disparate platforms are involved in this equation, but TrustPay advances the idea that it’s done the job by “pooling vast numbers of merchants” together. This in turn allows the lot to agree on certain basic standards to allow for the use of most any platform that’s willing to fit into said standard whether it’s payments through mobile money, carrier billing, or credit and debit cards.

Since the TrustPay system can be added to almost any payment system via an API, that lends credence to the argument that TrustPay might prove to be something of a universal platform.

TrustPay is mainly focusing on emerging markets right now, mostly in African regions, but extending somewhat into the Middle East.

The idea is one that’s actually beautiful in its simplicity. The sheer number of competitors in the field is both the greatest and the worst part about the mobile payments market, and it can be tough to keep it all straight.

But an option like TrustPay might well be able to pull all these separate elements together into one more centralized whole, and in turn, make more options available to users.

Mobile payments do have something of a usability problem; just look at Apple Pay and the various businesses of the MCX for a perfect example in one handy package. But if there were a means to consolidate the systems and make same more usable, then much of that problem would be lost.

It’s going to be a while before consolidation takes place, but it appears that TrustPay’s goal is to let more merchants accept payments regardless of the form, which is much needed in emerging markets.