In what would before now seem unlikely, Truecaller have partnered with Paystack in a bid to allow more merchants across Africa accept payments online in a frictionless and secure manner. This would be by leveraging Truecaller’s mobile identity product, Truecaller SDK.
Before now, Paystack as a mandation, requires all merchants who wanted to accept payments using their platform to be registered with various regulatory organizations. This had been a sort of problem for the merchants as a vast majority of businesses are unregistered. It is this requirement that has prevented many legitimate offline businesses from realizing the benefits of online payments.
Well, that seems to be all coming to an end soon, as the Paystack-Truecaller partnership means that “in addition to Paystack’s proprietary merchant risk assessment checks, merchants can now verify their mobile identity via Truecaller. Integrating Truecaller SDK as a verification mechanism strengthens the Paystack platform’s merchant verification process and also makes it possible to open up Paystack to the millions of unregistered businesses who were previously unable to accept online payments with Paystack.”
So, just before this time, Paystack employs the use of three verification options available to developers – the ability to verify the Bank Verification Number (BVN) of customers (BVN is an identifying number issued by Nigerian regulators), the ability to verify bank account details, and the ability to verify card details. The newest verification option is the Truecaller, and this would further help to increase trust in the space, which is a vital need in the sector.
In summary,
>Local businesses that are not registered can now receive online payments after being verified via Paystack’s in-house verification process. This process now includes phone number identity verification powered by Truecaller
>Businesses and developers receiving payments via Paystack can now build customer verification tools on top of Paystack’s Truecaller phone number verification API
Here’s to the newest partnership.