Scale, a South African card‑issuing startup, has partnered with Mastercard, a global payments company, to simplify card products for businesses in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Across many African markets, companies offering card payment must coordinate with several parties, including issuing banks, payment networks, and Bank Identification Number (BIN) sponsors, leading to slow product launches and increasing operational complexity. Mastercard and Scale say their one-integration model streamlines onboarding, processing, and compliance so businesses can focus on building products for customers while the platform handles the operational heavy lifting.
In Kenya, where mobile money is already big and card usage is growing for e-commerce and higher-value transactions, the partnership mainly cuts complexity and time-to-market for existing fintech players.
In markets like Senegal, Ivory Coast, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, where cards are less common and cash or mobile wallets still dominate, the focus is on enabling new use cases such as companion wallet cards, small and medium enterprises, corporate spending cards, payout cards for governments and non-profit organisations.
Through the partnership, Scale, founded in 2022 by Barbara Woollams and Miranda Naidoo, provides the issuing infrastructure, customer onboarding tools, and regulatory support while Mastercard brings its global payments network, bank partnerships and market expertise.
