Day: May 19, 2022

• Partnership will enable OPay customers to pay on global online platforms backed by Mastercard’s secure Mastercard virtual payment solution linked to the OPay wallet
• OPay consumers will enjoy a superior digital experience for multiple lifestyle services and new digital commerce opportunities for, with or without a bank account
• In addition to digital commerce enablement, the two parties will jointly develop solutions to position OPay at the leading edge of financial services within the markets they operate in

CAIRO, Egypt, May 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Fintech giant OPay and Mastercard today announced a strategic partnership, which marks a significant boost for wider financial inclusion and economic prosperity by opening up digital commerce to millions of people across  Middle East and Africa.

The collaboration enables OPay consumers and merchants in the region – including Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa and the UAE – to engage with brands and businesses anywhere across the globe, thanks to a Mastercard virtual payment solution linked to the OPay eWallet.

This partnership is the latest milestone in Mastercard’s emerging market strategy where the technology company is collaborating with growing Fintech’s such as OPay to expand access to digital payments, enable multiple lifestyle services, create new pathways to financial inclusion and support the next generation of super-apps. Consumers are increasingly looking for seamless user experiences on a single platform offering easier interactions to complete various day-to-day needs, including sending and receiving money, ordering food and groceries, organizing transport, lending, investing and listing items they wish to sell.

In the initial phase of this partnership, OPay customers will benefit from the Mastercard virtual payment solution linked to their OPay wallets, to shop at well-known global brands for leisure, travel, accommodation, entertainment, streaming services and more. The service is available regardless of whether or not the customer has a bank account. It also allows small business owners to purchase from suppliers abroad and pay with the secure virtual payment solution.

Amnah Ajmal, Executive Vice President for Market Development, Mastercard EEMEA, said: “At Mastercard, our innovation strategy is rooted in partnerships to support inclusion at scale. Our partnership with OPay demonstrates our commitment to supporting payments providers across the world to create an interconnected global payments ecosystem that benefits an array of consumers with unique needs.”

Yahui Zhou, CEO of OPay ,said : “As the leading fintech in the Middle East and Africa, we are delighted to be partnering with Mastercard as we continue on our journey to promote financial inclusion, helping to open up the global economy to more consumers and businesses across Middle East and Africa.”

Since its operations started in 2018, OPay’s active users have grown to 15 million in dozens of markets in which it operates. The company processes millions of transactions per day on average. In Nigeria alone, where OPay takes significant market share, users have saved billions of US dollars in the last four years through credit-linked savings accounts from their mobile wallets and small loans from lenders that use its platform.

Plans are in place to launch OPay services in other markets in the next three to five years, significantly driving the growth of digital inclusion and digital commerce, while at the same time widening OPay customer inclusion into the global economy.

Mastercard has made a worldwide commitment to financial inclusion, pledging to bring 1 billion people and 50 million micro and small businesses – with a focus on 25 million women entrepreneurs – into the digital economy by 2025.

About OPay:

OPay is a fast-growing mobile payment fintech company. OPay has achieved significant growth in the past three years and has become one of the largest fintech companies in Africa and Middle East with a decent market share in key markets including Nigeria, Egypt, and Pakistan among others. OPay offers bespoke services to different clients in order to suit their needs; some of these services include offline payment, online payment, digital wallet service through AI and other fintech innovations. OPay boasts over 15 million registered wallet users, 600,000 merchants nationwide and surpassed $6 billion in monthly transaction value.

About Mastercard

Mastercard (NYSE: MA), www.mastercard.com, Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.

Newly-rebranded Caseware shares game-changing research and launches the first in a series of transformative tools to meet changing industry needs.

TORONTO, May 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Creative, curious and adventurous may not be traits normally associated with accountants and auditors, but a recent study shows that’s just how a growing number of industry professionals see themselves.

The research – conducted by leading software provider Caseware International through interviews with nearly 500 accountants and auditors globally – suggests that the profession is shifting toward more insights-driven and human-centered work.

According to the study, some 37% of accountants and auditors surveyed place a high value on creative problem-solving. Nearly half (47%) say they are adventurous when it comes to trying new technology. Accounting professionals say they want to spend more time collaborating with their clients and colleagues, and their focus has shifted from analyzing what has happened to anticipating what happens next.

“We’ve been listening closely to our customers for over 30 years, and a clear message from this research is that the industry will look significantly different in the future than it does today,” said David Osborne, CEO of Caseware. “What has traditionally been seen as a tedious, number-crunching profession is rapidly transforming into one that’s dynamic, driven by analytical insights and focused on creative collaboration. Cloud-based solutions, intelligent automation and other innovations are sparking new business opportunities and opening up new career paths.”

Caseware, the leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider to the auditing and accounting industry, conducted the study from August through December 2021. The findings are already being applied in the company’s product and service development and have also informed its newly-unveiled rebrand. Among the insights shared by survey respondents is that many have been developing their people skills in order to foster closer working relationships with clients and teammates. They are also increasingly conscious of their potential to create lasting impact, the research shows.

“More than ever, we see auditors, accountants and financial analysts taking pride in the fact that their work benefits and improves the world,” Osborne said. “They play a key role, for example, in helping organizations move beyond traditional financial disclosure to share environmental,  social, and governance (ESG) information. Whether accounting professionals are detecting and preventing fraud, ensuring systems work properly, or helping companies operate both efficiently and ethically, the people who count on Caseware are making a difference.”

To support and drive the industry’s transformational change, Caseware has announced a global rebranding as it begins rolling out the next generation of automation, analytics and problem-solving tools – all designed to enrich the experience of its customers as they help their clients achieve unprecedented performance.

The new Caseware brand was revealed in Toronto at CwX, the company’s first global annual conference. In his remarks to the combined in-person and online audience, Osborne committed to providing customers with versatile, innovative tools that enable them to do their best work. The CEO also shared the company’s renewed sense of purpose: “Caseware is in business to help our customers work more effectively, gain deeper insights and see further along the road that leads to change for the better. We succeed by advancing our customers’ success, and we help them drive transformation by designing technology that reflects our deep understanding of what they hope to achieve – and why.”

Central to the company’s new product offering is a cutting-edge, cloud-based business intelligence tool called Sherlock, which consolidates data across multiple engagements and generates powerful insights that can then be leveraged to sharpen efficiency and accelerate growth. Officially launched on May 19, Sherlock is the first in a series of market-changing products Caseware plans to introduce over the next three to five years.

“As we build the tools that are helping transform the future of accounting, we’re also helping individual customers pursue careers fueled by curiosity and creative intelligence,” said Osborne, who joined Caseware as CEO in June 2021 following a strategic investment in the company by private equity firm Hg Capital in October 2020.

With Hg’s financial backing and under Osborne’s leadership, Caseware has experienced exponential growth. In the last year alone, the company has added over 250 new team members worldwide. Solidifying its position as the leading provider of cloud-based audit and assurance software, Caseware has also expanded its global footprint by acquiring three of its distributors – in the US, Denmark and the Netherlands.

“These are exciting times for the accounting and auditing industry, as digital transformation takes us to places we never imagined,” Osborne said. “We’re looking forward to equipping more accountants and auditors around the world with solutions that meet their high expectations for speed, accuracy, responsiveness, and equally important, their desire for easier collaboration and insight-driven problem-solving. Supported by our thoughtfully-designed tools and platforms, they can focus on what matters most: building stronger relationships with their colleagues and clients –  and we’ll be right there alongside them as a trusted, innovative partner.”

Caseware is the leading global provider of cloud-enabled audit, financial reporting and data analytics solutions for accounting firms, corporations and government regulators. Caseware’s innovative tools and platforms help more than half a million customers in 130 countries work smarter, dig deeper and see further as they transform insights into impact. For more information, visit https://www.caseware.com .

Media information and to set up interviews: Isabella Kima – Corporate communications specialist, isabella.kima@caseware.com

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JAKARTA, Indonesia, May 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The Indonesian government has urged the G20 Digital Economy Working Group (DEWG) to continue the discussion on digital connectivity.

“I believe we have all witnessed the importance of information and communication technology in helping people cope with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Minister of Communication and Informatics, Johnny G. Plate, stated.

The DEWG is part of the Indonesian G20 Sherpa Track. The working group originated with the formation of the G20 Digital Economy Task Force (DETF) in 2017 during the German G20 presidency.

The working group was mandated to discuss the implementation of an interconnected, protected, and safe digital technology to develop an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable digital economy.

The second DEWG meeting, under Indonesia’s G20 presidency, which is being held in Yogyakarta on May 17-19, 2022, discusses the issue of digital connectivity.

As the chair of the 2022 G20 Presidency, Indonesia has encouraged the 2022 G20 DEWG participants to discuss three priority issues: digital connectivity and post-COVID-19 recovery; digital skills and digital literacy; as well as cross-border data flow and trusted free data flow.

At the meeting, Minister Plate emphasized the importance of overcoming the digital divide by building digital connectivity or telecommunications infrastructure.

During the second DEWG meeting, he urged that the discussion focus on inclusiveness, empowerment, and sustainability for strengthening the global position and recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The digital divide has remained an issue until now. According to data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in 2021, a total of 2.9 billion people across the world had never used the Internet.

Meanwhile, according to the World Bank data for Indonesia, 94 million adults could not access the Internet via mobile devices in 2019.

“The digital divide remains a challenge. Those who have access to fixed broadband Internet are even fewer,” Plate pointed out.

The digital divide has become one of the reasons for the G20 DEWG forum to discuss the issue of digital connectivity.

The Ministry of Communication and Informatics, which is in charge of the DEWG, is seeking to address the digital divide by strengthening collaboration to drive massive construction of digital infrastructure between G20 member countries and the rest of the world.

Digital Connectivity
The discussion on connectivity has become more relevant in the wake of a global economic turmoil that has affected food, commodities, and energy availability as well as caused the inflation rate to soar.

“The discussion on digital connectivity becomes important at the second DEWG meeting because after the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy is greatly supported through the use of digital connections in solving various community problems as well as empowering the community itself,” Minister Plate emphasized.

Plate further accentuated that the pandemic had shown the extent to which people are dependent on digital ecosystems in various public sectors, such as education, health and, of course, economic development.

Taking into account the importance of the digital connectivity issue, the priority issue of DEWG is discussed in five subtopics.

First, Plate said, DEWG discusses a common understanding of digital connectivity by placing the community as the main focus of the digital connectivity development efforts.

“This is what we mean by people-centric digital connectivity,” he remarked.

The second subtopic of the digital connectivity discussion at the second DEWG meeting is digital security as a key enabler to support the business community.

The intensification of digital communications indirectly also raises new challenges in the form of various digital security risks that threaten the online safety of internet users, especially the increasingly digital economic actors.

Recognizing the importance of digital security in supporting the sustainability of digital businesses in the future, the DEWG decided to facilitate the collection of existing digital security and safety practices.

On the third subtopic, the Working Group agreed to establish a G20 Digital Innovation Network as a continuation of the G20 Innovation League hosted by the G20 Italian presidency last year.

Such a network aims to accommodate and support the collaboration of digital innovation actors around the world, such as start-ups, venture capitalists, corporations, and governments.

On the fourth subtopic, the G20 DEWG welcomes the implementation of the digital transformation expo that will showcase the achievements of G20 members regarding strategic policies and information on digital transformation.

“The Indonesian G20 presidency hopes that the concept of the event would be welcomed positively and enthusiastically by the holders of the next G20 presidency,” Minister Plate stated.

On the fifth subtopic, the G20 DEWG supports the notion from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on the smart village and smart island initiative.

“Support for this idea shows Indonesia’s commitment to taking advantage of the role of the G20 to solve various issues in the global community. DEWG encourages solidarity in the use of digital transformation, not only from G20 member countries but also non-member countries, especially small island developing states,” he stated.

Minister Plate expressed gratitude for the smooth, proper, and focused implementation of the second DEWG meeting.

Plate also reminded all delegates and knowledge partners to join the third DEWG meeting that will be held in Labuan Bajo, East Nusa Tenggara, on July 20-21, 2022.

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