Union54, a leading provider of innovative digital financial solutions, and Mastercard, a global payments technology company, today announced the launch of social commerce platform ChitChat. Mastercard’s integration into ChitChat’s payments and USD Debit Card features represents a deepening of their partnership to enable the issuance of cards in African markets, beginning with Angola, Tanzania and Ghana.
ChitChat is a social commerce platform developed by Union54 that enables consumers across Africa to chat to each other over an encrypted platform. ChitChat users will also be able to send each other money, access a USD Debit Card, and purchase from digital storefronts within the app. ChitChat’s card and payments features will roll out in a beta for Angola, Tanzania, and Ghana with more markets being added this year.
Mastercard and Union54’s partnership has ushered in a new standard for payments in the African market with Union54’s market leading products combining with Mastercard’s secure payment technology to offer Africans a range of financial services. Union54 previously issued over 2 million cards in partnership with Mastercard. ChitChat aims to give more value to the African user while still offering industry-leading payments solutions.
“We are excited to announce our ChitChat product and at the same time, announce our expanded partnership with Mastercard.” said Perseus Mlambo, CEO of Union54. “We believe that mobile payments and chat platforms can be a powerful force for increasing trade across Africa, and we are committed to building a platform that accelerates this. We’ve built payments into a chat platform, giving everyone a USD card on demand – on our terms.”
Gabriel Swanepoel, Country Manager at Mastercard, Southern Africa added: “We’ve gone through quite an extensive program to ensure the issues that we were seeing with Union54 have been addressed.” ChitChat users will have confidence to transact freely with the security of Mastercard’s support.