Africa’s $1.4 Trillion merchant payments market is rapidly moving from cash to mobile payments – but much of the continent lacks some or all of the critical infrastructure components for a functioning payments network.

TranSat Africa is an integrated connectivity, payments and fintech network specifically developed to provide:

• A secure, reliable satellite network that seamlessly links banks, merchants and payment providers to their mobile phone customers;
• Payments interoperability: we enable merchants to instantly accept any type of digital payments including (importantly in Africa) Mobile Money;
• Mobile interoperability: our technology works with any mobile phone — from inexpensive ‘feature’ phones (60% of the African market) to 5G smartphones;
• Tamperproof transactions: we create a unique online ID for each customer; encrypt all data; and routes all transactions through a secure cloud-based network.

Our satellite network uniquely addresses the African banking and payments markets connectivity requirements including:

• New-to-market satellite terminal that is the size of an iPad and can be solar-powered;
• All-weather and all-terrain network provides 99.99% uptime (the highest in Africa).

Our interoperable payments network securely routes the transaction for the most efficient and cost-effective processing:

• Interoperability enabled MasterCard / Visa to become the largest payment networks (with a combined market cap of $700+ Billion).

Our fintech solutions provide:

• Patented multifactor authentication (including MasterCard certification as an advanced authentication solution);
• Proprietary process for converting telco Mobile Money to an interoperable virtual pre-paid debit card.

Simple, scalable business model:

• We earn a per-transaction fee on every payment routed through our network.

Accomplished management team:

• TranSat was founded by experience digital bankers and cybersecurity experts along with an on-the-ground in Africa technology implementation team.

Strategic Partnerships:

• ViaSat is a San Diego-based, publicly, traded satellite communications company (NSDQ:VSAT). TranSat Africa is commercializing and adapting ViaSat’s L-Band Satellite Network (developed for the US Military) to banking and payments in Africa.
• Unlimited is a Kinshasa-based technology solutions provider with over 20 years experience implementing satellite and mobile communications solutions.
• Arch Retail Systems is one of the largest providers of point-of-sale (POS) payment and accounting systems to merchants in Africa.Arch has over 1,400 customers including the 2 largest retailers in Africa:
  • Shoprite (largest supermarket chain in Africa with 2,700+ stores)
  • Walmart Africa (MassMart with 425 stores in12 African countries).

Mobile Money:

Sub-Saharan Africa is a Mobile Money market with 400 million accounts (half of all adults) 87 million active monthly users, and 1.7 Billion transactions in 2018 worth $27 Billion.

• 90% of Mobile Money payments are Person-to-Person (P2P) and 10% are merchant payments – mostly for utilities and ‘air time top up’ (purchase of cell phone minutes).
• Mobile Money is generally not used at merchant point-of-sale (POS) because the connectivity is too slow or uncertain, and the process is too cumbersome – problems addressed by TranSat QuickPay.

Merchant Solutions:

TranSat Africa is digitizing the $1.4 Trillion retail payments market by providing merchants with an end-to-end solution that is simple to install and eliminates the complexities of:

• Instant connectivity to both in-store Mobile Money customers and back-end payments processors and settlement banks;
• Payments interoperability enabling seamless acceptance of any digital payment including debit and credit cards, and Mobile Money;
• Encryption and compliance with payments industry security protocols;
• Integration into back-end accounting and inventory control systems.

The Opportunity:

• Our immediate opportunity is to make Mobile Money payments at merchant POS more convenient than using cash.
• Get this right, and the numbers speak for themselves – half of all adults already have a Mobile Money account and merchant payments today are 90% cash.
• If we capture 3% of the market, we will do $42 Billion in transactions and generate $1.05 Billion in fees.

Competition:

• KPMG views the competitive landscape in Africa as:

“FinTech companies entering the Africana market face some complexity but virtually no market competition, and more than a billion people can be reached.” – KPMG 2016 Africa Report, Payment Developments in Africa

Sustainable Competitive Advantage:

• Payments networks are only as useful and reliable as the connectivity.
• Once a new connectivity and payments network is adopted by banks, merchants and their mobile customers, it will become difficult to dislodge.