Mastercard and MTN Group Fintech have signed a multi-market agreement that will see the introduction of a prepaid virtual card to the mobile operator’s Mobile Money (MoMo) ecosystem.

This will allow users to make point-of-sale payments using their MoMo wallets and give merchants the ability to accept card payments.

“The prepaid virtual card tailored for MTN’s MoMo customers will grant them access to more than 100 million acceptance points worldwide,” said MTN in a statement on Thursday.

“It will empower MoMo merchants to accept card payments seamlessly, enhancing the platform’s instant cross-border money remittance services and capabilities.”

According to MTN, 60 million of its 290 million subscribers have MoMo wallets that are active on a monthly basis.

The agreement with Mastercard will impact subscribers in 13 markets: Benin, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Eswatini, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Republic of Guinea, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia.

The agreement follows Mastercard’s acquisition of a minority stake in MTN Group Fintech – an investment to the tune of US$200-million – announced earlier this month. The partnership aims to “support several mobile money programmes across Africa” and bring more of the continent’s unbanked, about 43% of the population of 1.3 billion, into the financial mainstream.

On the merchant side, small businesses using MoMo will receive additional tools, including Mastercard’s SME-in-a-Box solution, which facilitates the migration of small businesses online by helping them accept a wide range of digital payments at low cost.