Africa’s digital payments market is projected to hit $1.5 trillion by 2030, and global payments giant Mastercard (NASDAQ: MA) is positioning itself at the heart of this revolution. The New York-based giant expanded its acceptance network in Africa by 45% in 2025, opened new offices in three countries, and increased its workforce by 20%.
Announcing the milestone, Mastercard stated that it opened up digital payments to millions more consumers and SMEs, advancing the continent’s digital economy.
The company opened new offices in Uganda, Ghana, and Mauritius and plans to open more in 2026. A 20% increase in its employee base allowed it to create solutions tailored to the needs of its consumers while strengthening its local capabilities.
“2025 has been a defining year for Mastercard in Africa. From acceptance growth to new digital capabilities, our focus has been on solutions that bring people and small businesses into the heart of the digital economy,” commented Mark Elliott, the company’s president for Africa.
While consumer payments continue to surge in Africa, Mastercard is betting on SMEs as its primary growth engine. It continues to support the sector through the Mastercard Payment Gateway System, which enables swift e-commerce transactions, QR payments, and point-of-sale (POS) solutions.
Overall, it launched 15 new SME programs in the past 18 months. They include a digital marketplace in Morocco that serves 2.3 million artists, QR-on-card solutions in Nigeria serving 1.8 million SMEs, and collaborations with local lenders in Kenya, Mauritius, and Tanzania that have impacted 200,000 SMEs.
Beyond the bottom line, Mastercard has been fostering financial inclusion in underserved communities. Under its Community Pass social enterprise campaign, it has offered financial services to 1.2 million Ugandan small-scale farmers, with a target of 15 million users in five years.
“Our collaborations across Africa will continue to connect more people and businesses to the financial system, helping drive greater financial inclusion and economic opportunity, as we collectively look towards a $1.5 trillion digital economy by 2030,” added Elliot.
Mastercard faces stiff competition for the African market from its longtime rival, Visa (NASDAQ: V). The California-based giant announced a new partnership days ago with Orange Money Group—one of the continent’s largest mobile money service providers with €160 billion in transactions last year—to accelerate digital payments across Africa.
It also rolled out a new merchant payments system in Kenya, launched Visa Pay in the Democratic Republic of Congo, partnered with Yellow Card to expand stablecoin payments, and launched its first African data center in South Africa.
Watch: Richard Baker on engineering a smarter financial world with blockchain
title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen=””>
Source: https://coingeek.com/mastercard-45-growth-targets-africa-projected-1-5t-market/
