FirstBank Rolls Out New Mobile Payments in Nigeria

Another day, another example of how going after the feature phone market is paying off in a big way for those willing to pursue it. First Bank of Nigeria recently set up a partnership effort with Visa to bring the mVisa solution to Nigeria, a move that should open up the growing slate of feature phones in the region for mobile payment systems providers.

With mVisa, customers can pay for items or services by just scanning a quick response (QR) code through the FirstMobile app. Once that’s done, payment in the amount designated is transferred from the customer’s FirstBank account into the merchant’s account—it seems both have to be FirstBank members for this to work—and both parties are notified of the transfer accordingly. The app can be had on not just iOS devices, but also Android and even Blackberry.

First Bank of Nigeria, for its part, considers this to be part of an overall strategy to offer more payment options to customers, and improve those options as well with greater reliability and security.

While this is likely a big step forward for Nigerians using the First Bank of Nigeria mobile functions, it really underscores two things: one, QR codes are going to be a huge part of the mobile payments market going forward thanks to the sheer numbers who don’t have smartphones or the infrastructure on which to run these. This is likely a large part of why EMVCo recently pushed toward the new QR code standards recently. Two, the size of this market is likely being rather understated as many aren’t really taking the kind of push at it they should be. We’re seeing EMVCo move on this with its QR code enhancement, and we’ve recently just seen Margento’s voice to data connections do likewise, but those who get their solution in play first will win the right to be the first entrenched player.

Only time will tell who comes out ahead here, but it’s clear: pursuing the feature phone market is likely to be lucrative going forward. There’s a lot of those devices out there, and behind them, plenty of people who want to use mobile payments.