Africa’s fast-growing payment infrastructure company, Zone,  has announced the launch of its POS Payment Gateway product. In a statement sent to Technext, the company said the POS product is built on the latest version of its next-gen payment infrastructure that is powered by blockchain technology.

Speaking about the development, CEO and co-founder of Zone, Obi Emetarom described the POS payment gateway product as a commitment to financial inclusion and to the digital future of all payments in Africa.

“Today marks a pivotal moment not just for us at Zone, but also for the Financial Institutions we enable, and the esteemed customers they serve. Our PoS Payment Gateway Product is a commitment to financial inclusion and to the digital future of all payments in Africa,” the CEO said.

He also said with this new offering, the startup is excited to have taken yet another major step towards its vision for a world where individuals and businesses can make and receive instant payments to and from anyone in the world, through any payment method and in any currency.

Zone’s POS payment gateway

Touted as Africa’s first decentralised payment network, Zone is a decentralized network of banks and fintechs powered by blockchain and focused on enabling domestic and cross-border payments. It is a regulated blockchain network that enables payments and acceptance of digital currencies. Its Layer-1 blockchain network digitises fiat payments and enables the transition to digital currencies while connecting previously excluded financial institutions into an all-inclusive payment ecosystem

The rollout of its POS payment gateway follows the success of its ATM transaction processing service. It is also coming months after the startup raised $8.5 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round. The company said the new funding will enable it to further expand the coverage of its network domestically and connect more banks and financial services companies.

The CEO also told Technext at the time that the company’s new technology (Zone 2.0) will increase transaction processing capacity by 20x and that the updated infrastructure will be resilient in handling instability and downtime. The roll-out of its PoS payment gateway, thus, fulfills the company’s promise of delivering reliable, frictionless, and universally interoperable payments across multiple payment channels.

“The introduction of Zone’s PoS Payment Gateway product brings a comprehensive payment processing solution to Banks and Fintechs that deploy PoS payment terminals. The product promises transaction reliability through direct routing of transactions to issuers, same-day settlement for beneficiaries and their financial institutions, and a robust framework eliminating chargebacks and chargeback fraud.  Key to note here is that Zone (as a CBN-licensed payment switch) is able to implement direct transaction routing to issuers without violating regulatory guidelines on inter-bank payments,” the company said in the statement.

The company said at the core of its PoS Payment Gateway is its regulated layer-1 blockchain network, which guarantees the security, reliability, and transparency of every transaction. Thus, its architecture endows the PoS payment gateway with several key features which include:

• Direct Card Routing: an architecture that optimises the PoS transaction route, and eliminates failure points thereby guaranteeing increased speed and reliability of each transaction for the benefit of merchants, agents, and cardholders alike.
• No Chargebacks: The PoS payment gateway eliminates chargebacks and chargeback fraud on PoS terminals by auto-refunding customers for unsuccessful transactions and auto-declining fraudulent chargebacks in real time — thereby building a foundation of trust and satisfaction among all parties involved.
• Same-Day Settlements: Settlement of payments from PoS terminals using Zone is effected on the same day and separately for each transaction, ensuring faster availability of funds for both agents and merchants alike, and making it easy to determine when value has been received for every transaction.

While admitting that a few leading fintechs have made some strides towards improving the quality of service specifically for their own PoS terminals, the startup says its offering goes a step further by making such improvements and related advanced features accessible to all financial service providers in the industry.

“This democratization of cutting-edge technology ensures that all institutions utilising Zone’s product for PoS-based transaction processing can now enjoy superior levels of transaction reliability, and operational efficiency while delivering delightful payment experiences to their own customers each and every time,” it says.