Mukuru launches wallet card
Mbongeni Mguni | Monday August 24, 2026 06:00
Mukuru, established 21 years ago, serves more than 17 million customers and processes over 100 million transactions across Southern, East, and West Africa as well as key global corridors. The group specialises in digital fintech services, which include remittances as well as payments.
On Wednesday, officials unveiled the new chip-and-PIN-enabled card, developed in partnership with Visa and Access Bank Botswana. The card allows Mukuru clients to buy and pay for goods and services across the world, using the funds in their wallets.
Thembani Moyo, Mukuru’s country manager for Botswana, said the group originally launched the wallet in 2023, as a digital store of value enabling clients to save their cash and enjoy add-on services such as prepaid electricity, airtime and other digital payments.
The addition of the Visa-enabled card would bring convenience for different categories of clients, including entrepreneurs and small business owners.
“Our customers are now able to save, they are now able to spend, and they are also able to send,” he said. “All of this is not possible if it were not for the partnerships. “We've got our banking partner, Access Bank, who are providing the licensed financial infrastructure which we need, and which makes this card compliant, secure and trusted. “We also have Visa, the world's most accepted payment network.”
Commenting on the card’s significance for financial inclusion, Moyo gave the example of a small business owner at the bus rank who would now be able to safely save her earnings and transact through the account, rather than keeping the funds at home.
“She has been running the stall at the bus rank for the past 15 years, counting cash every evening. “Today, she loads her daily takings into her new wallet and is able to pay for supplies wherever she goes with her card,” he said.
For her part, Access Bank head of retail banking, Shathiso Choto, said the launch of the card was a demonstration of what is possible when organisations come together with a shared vision of making financial services more accessible, convenient and relevant to the people of Africa.
“Through partnerships, we combine the agility and customer-centric innovation of fintechs with the scale, regulatory strength and financial expertise of leading banking institutions,” she said. “For many people, financial inclusion begins with access. “We call ourselves Access. Access to secure, inclusive money, access to convenient and affordable payments, access to savings opportunities, access to formal financial services and many more.”
Amon Magunje, Visa country manager for Botswana and Zambia, said the agreement with Mukuru and Access in Botswana is a key ambition to build a more diversified, digitally enabled, inclusive economy.
“I'm sure the regulators will be looking at how such partnerships bring financial inclusion into their system,” he said. “Achieving that vision requires much more than productivity. “It requires practical tools that allow people to participate in the everyday economy.”
Botswana boasts one of Africa’s highest mobile penetration rates at 166%, with approximately 4.21 million connections in a population of 2.54 million.