E-Business
Better Digital Payments Infrastructure is Facilitating Access to New Markets for Enterprise
By Doreen Lukandwa, Head, Commercial Strategy at Onafriq
Saying that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of economies in East Africa is an understatement. SMEs make up the largest part of all registered entities in nearly every industry and sector in most East African countries, averaging between 60% to 90%, including micro-enterprises.
As the region continues to experience significant progress and development, the SME ecosystem plays a crucial role in creating employment opportunities, encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship, and diversifying economies.
However, only a few of these SMEs will grow into larger-sized firms or expand their reach into markets beyond the area they operate. This is mainly due to the constraints they face that limit their ability to expand and scale their business, such as inadequate financing and access to investment and financial services and insufficient integration into international capital markets.
Historically, the finance sector in East Africa has shown a preference for traditional banks, which have been restricted in terms of geographical reach and other factors. This has resulted in limited access to financial services for many merchants in the region, hindering economic growth and development. But this is changing.
The emergence of an increasingly robust digital payments infrastructure in East Africa presents an incredible opportunity for businesses to scale by opening up access to new markets in the region, across the continent, and around the globe.
Expanding the global footprint of enterprise
Africa accounts for 70% of the world’s $1 trillion in mobile money value, mainly due to the boom in digital instant payment solutions and inclusive interoperable payment systems across the continent. East Africa makes up the largest mobile money market on the continent, with transaction values worth $491 billion for 390 million registered accounts in 2022.
These booming, secure, efficient, and interconnected digital payment systems are transforming the business landscape by breaking down geographical barriers and broadening enterprises’ ability to collect and make payments to and from anywhere in the world.
Trailblazing fintech firms are revolutionising the digital payments space and helping enterprises solve their revenue collection and payments challenges, reducing operational costs and leaving them free to focus on operational efficiency.
Now, SMEs can scale their existing services into new African and global markets by capitalising on the growing digital payment infrastructure without the need to build their payment infrastructure or platforms. With just the right payment partner, businesses can expand into new territories by establishing a virtual financial presence, helping duplicate their services in the new market.
By leveraging the shared infrastructure and resources from their payment partner, enterprises can now mitigate risks while gaining access to local knowledge and networks.
Enabling enterprise to meet its full potential
The increased access to new markets for enterprises, facilitated by the digital payments space, enables their ability to scale up, compete with larger firms, and increase their growth potential.
By scaling effectively, East African SMEs can keep up with customer and market demands, improve their efficiencies and find new avenues of revenue growth without being held back by a lack of resources or infrastructure. It encourages innovation, which could see the development of new products and services, increase sales opportunities, and further their ability to serve more customers and expand into new markets.
As the rapid growth of digital payments technology continues, we can expect to see more enterprises take advantage of the increased access to new markets, resulting in the growth of SMEs across the region and subsequently driving the creation of better-paid jobs, economic growth and ensuring more competitive economies.
Transcorp Hotels Plc has delivered a stellar performance in the first half of 2025, recording a 60% year-on-year surge in revenue to ₦47.57 billion, up from ₦29.72 billion in H1 2024. Gross profit climbed 71% to ₦36.21 billion, maintaining a strong 76% margin despite inflation and operational headwinds.
The hospitality giant, a subsidiary of Transnational Corporation Plc, also announced an interim dividend payout of ₦1.024 billion — offering ₦0.10 per 50 kobo ordinary share to shareholders.
In a bold move, the company unveiled Nigeria’s largest corporate venue — the 5,000-seat Transcorp Centre — staking its claim as the new leader in event hospitality. Chairman Emmanuel Nnorom described the results as proof of Transcorp Hotels’ transformative strategies and unwavering investor commitment. MD/CEO Uzo Oshogwe attributed the success to relentless execution and a resilient business model.
Transcorp Hotels, renowned for iconic assets like Transcorp Hilton Abuja and its digital platform Aura, says it isn’t just leading Nigeria’s hospitality sector — it’s redefining excellence across Africa.
Chinese “threat actors” have hacked Microsoft’s SharePoint document software servers and targeted the data of the businesses using it, the firm has said.
China state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon as well as China-based Storm-2603 were said to have “exploited vulnerabilities” in on-premises SharePoint servers, the kind used by firms, but not in its cloud-based service.
The US tech giant has released security updates in response and has advised all on-premises SharePoint server customers to install them.
“Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing,” Microsoft said in a statement.
The firm said it had “high confidence” the hackers would continue to target systems which have not installed its security updates.
It added that it would update its website blog with more information as its investigation continues.
Microsoft said it had observed attacks in which hackers had sent a request to a SharePoint server “enabling the theft of the key material by threat actors”.
Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting firm, a division of Google Cloud, told reporter, it was “aware of several victims in several different sectors across a number of global geographies”.
Carmakal said it appeared that governments and businesses that use SharePoint on their sites were the primary target.
A number of adversaries who stole material encoded by cryptography were then able to regain ongoing access to the victims’ SharePoint data, he said.
“This was exploited in a very broad way, very opportunistically before a patch was made available. That’s why this is significant,” Carmakal said.
Carmakal said the “China-nexus actor” was deploying techniques similar to previous campaigns associated with Beijing.
Microsoft said Linen Typhoon had “focused on stealing intellectual property, primarily targeting organizations related to government, defence, strategic planning, and human rights” for 13 years.
It added that Violet Typhoon had been “dedicated to espionage”, primarily targeting former government and military staff, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, higher education, the media, the financial sector and the health sector in the US, Europe, and East Asia.
Meanwhile, Storm-2603 was “assessed with medium confidence to be a China-based threat actor”.
National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has issued a public warning that it is not associated with NINcard.com.
According to the commission, the website has been circulating online to offer services for Nigerians seeking National Identification Number (NIN) services.
NIMC, in a post on its official X account on Wednesday, said, “NINcard.com is not in anyway affiliated to NIMC. Stay vigilant!”
The warning was accompanied by screenshots of fake payment receipts and OTP request pages from the website, both of which were boldly stamped “FAKE” by NIMC to alert the public.
NIBBS: Banks Close 29.4m Accounts, Dormant Accounts Hit 33.39m
NDPC Hides MultiChoice Privacy Violation Details Despite FOI Request- FIJ
Cardoso, CBN Boss Risks Arrest over Alleged N5.2 Trillion Unremitted Funds
UK Businesses Look to Africa As Strategic Growth Partners
FG Plans N50m STEEM Grant to Support Student Innovation in August
Telecom2 days agoGlo Launches Nigeria’s First-of-its-kind Device Protection Plan
Telecom2 days agoTelcos: How and Why Network Services have Been Poor
Broadcasting2 days agoCanal+ Clears Final Hurdle to Acquire South Africa’s MultiChoice
E-Business2 days agoNIMC Warns Nigerians of Fake NIN Website
Telecom2 days agoMTN Executive Adeola Oduntan Emerges as Africa’s Supply Chain Leader of 2025
- Telecom2 days ago
MTN Nigeria Sweeps Africa’s Procurement Awards With Innovation and Impact
E-Business2 days agoMicrosoft Servers Hacked by Chinese Groups
Telecom2 days agoTelegram to allow U.S. users send, receive crypto directly in app