Blue Label Telecoms and MasterCard plan to roll out point-of-sale (POS) devices to 22 000 small traders and rural shops in South Africa, allowing them to accept card payments for the first time.

Blue Label already provides thousands of POS terminals in South Africa, which are used mainly to sell prepaid vouchers such as airtime and electricity. In rural areas and underserved settlements, these traders have historically operated on a cash-only basis.

“Over and above the estimated 100 000 spaza shops spread across South Africa, there are tens of thousands of small and medium-sized retailers and service providers,” says Blue Label co-CEO Mark Levy.

“Through our partnership with MasterCard, we will introduce many of these businesses to the safety, security, and convenience of electronic payments, enabling financial inclusion in communities where consumers have largely been unable to use formal payment products,” he says in a statement.

In the same statement, MasterCard divisional president for South Africa, Philip Panaino, says that although the number of South Africans with access to formal banking products has “increased significantly” in the past year, the number of card acceptance locations, especially in rural and peri-urban areas, has not grown in tandem.

Blue Label expects to roll out more than 15 000 new EMV-certified and contactless-ready POS terminals, allowing traders to accept chip-and-Pin and contactless payment cards and to sell Blue Label’s prepaid vouchers using a single device.

Blue Label also plans to upgrade 7 000 of its existing terminals used in smaller spaza stores using MasterCard Mobile software. This will allow MasterCard cardholders to use their Pin-based debit, cheque or credit card issued by Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank and the South African Social Security Agency and their mobile phone to pay for their purchases in-store at select merchants.