Interswitch is a leading African integrated payments and digital commerce platform company headquartered in
Lagos
Lagos (Nigerian English: ; ) is the largest city in Nigeria and the List of cities in Africa by population, second most populous city in Africa, with a population of 15.4 million as of 2015 within the city proper. Lagos was the national ca ...
. Founded in 2002 in Nigeria, as a transaction switching and processing company with national focus, Interswitch progressively evolved to incorporate consumer financial services with the successive launches of Quickteller, a retail payments ecosystem linking merchants and billers with consumers, as well as Verve, a homegrown, EMV-certified payments card scheme.
History
The Interswitch company was founded in 2002 by Mitchell Elegbe, it continued as an Africa-focused integrated digital payments and commerce company.
In 2010 two thirds of the company was sold to a consortium led by
Helios Investment Partners
Helios Investment Partners is a private equity investing firm operating in Africa and based in London, United Kingdom, with additional offices in Nairobi, Kenya and Lagos, Nigeria.
Overview
Helios Investment Partners was established in 2004 b ...
.
[ In 2011 Interswitch took a 60 per cent stake in Bankom in ]Uganda
}), is a landlocked country in East Africa
East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territor ...
.[
In 2013 Interswitch entered into an agreement for payment processing with ]Discover Financial Services
Discover Financial Services is an American financial services company that owns and operates Discover Bank, which offers checking and savings accounts, personal loans, home equity loans, student loans and credit cards. It also owns and operate ...
.
In September 2014 the company acquired a majority shareholding in Paynet Group, an East-African payments provider.
In 2015 Interswitch launched a $10m investment fund for African start-ups in the payments sector.
In February 2018, Interswitch unveiled its SPAK National Science Competition to promote and reward excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Nigeria.
Operations and subsidiaries
The Interswitch company was established as, common African financial services provider and maintains exclusively, a wide array of interconnected datacenters in Africa.[
]Verve
Verve may refer to:
Music
* The Verve, an English rock band
* ''The Verve E.P.'', a 1992 EP by The Verve
* ''Verve'' (R. Stevie Moore album)
* Verve Records, an American jazz record label
Businesses
* Verve Coffee Roasters, an American coffee ho ...
, a payment card industry is another subsidiary of Interswitch.[ Verve has also been launched in Kenya.
Interswitch also owns Quickteller, originally cited as a Telecommunication airtime vendor, additionally, providing payments services.
Interswitch systems deploys sophisticated inter-networking security and firewalls, as common brand innovation.
In October 2020, Quickteller launched the Qtrybe community, a community of 50 exceptional students from Nigerian tertiary institutions to serve as ambassadors of Quickteller and Interswitch on their campuses.]
References
{{reflist
Financial services companies established in 2002
Financial services companies of Nigeria
Companies based in Lagos
Nigerian brands