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 second most populous city in Africa, with a population of 15.4 million as of 2015 within the city proper. Lagos was the national capital of Nigeria until December 1991 fo ...
. 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. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The ...
.[
In 2013 Interswitch entered into an agreement for payment processing with Discover Financial Services.
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, 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