Ecobank freshly publicize that they are launching a new service called Scan+Pay which will be available in thirty-three countries across Africa. Scan+Pay is a service that’ll enable consumers to scan a barcode image (QR code) using their smartphone so that they can pay for goods or send money to someone else. The service is the result of a partnership between Ecobank & Visa. 

Visa has a mobile payment system called mVisa which uses this system of scanning QR codes to process transactions. So the 2 have worked together to offer mVisa to you. Scan+Pay will be accessible from the Ecobank mobile application & will work on both feature phones & smartphones. If your phone doesn’t have a camera to scan the QR code, you’ll be able to enter a unique merchant identifying code as an option.

Once you have entered the unique merchant identifying code or scanned the QR code, Scan+Pay will process the payment right away & it will go straight from your Ecobank account to the merchant’s account. Both of you’ll be able to get real-time notifications for the transaction. According to Ecobank, Scan+Pay serves to step up digital commerce & combat some of the challenges merchants faced with the traditional point of sale systems.

The challenges include the cost of installation, electricity & internet connectivity. With Scan+Pay, no extra equipment would be required so it would be easier for new merchants to get digital payments. As we mentioned earlier, using Scan+Pay from the Ecobank app, you will be able to send money straight to another person.

So if you are in the Diaspora, you can link your Visa card to the Ecobank app & then send money to another Visa card holder who is in Africa. It is almost like EcoCash where the payments are fast & they do not need any additional hardware. But, you’ll still need to have a bank account & it is not that easy to get one as it is with EcoCash.

Scan+Pay is a good service that Ecobank is bringing & possibly EcoCash might want to look at bringing such a service. So instead of entering the merchant code, you can just scan a QR code using the EcoCash app & make the payment in fewer steps but then again, it is not a really necessary feature as EcoCash is already solving mobile payments & is accessible to anyone.

Note that Ecobank had launched a service similar to this earlier this year called Masterpass. Masterpass also brought payments using QR codes. But, it has since disappeared so it seems like this is a re-launch of the same product only this time, they’ve partnered with Visa instead of Mastercard.