Direct Pay Online Group has been recognized as one of the best payment platforms in Africa by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

The award comes after the successful completion of comprehensive audits in the Group’s global headquarters and all its other markets including Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Namibia, Nigeria, Botswana, Ghana, Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

The PCI DSS is the highest privacy and security standard in the payments industry and applies to entities that store, process or transmit cardholder data or sensitive authentication data.

The certification is administered by the PCI DSS Council, which was founded by Visa Inc, MasterCard Worldwide, American Express, Discover Financial Service and JCB International.

"As Direct Pay Online, our goal is to keep up with the highest level of security, privacy and standards, in any market we go into. We process merchant payments from all major credit cards, mobile money and e-wallets, and ensure that their data is protected. This compliance certificate demonstrates that our systems are up to par with international security standards,” Eran Feinstein, the DPO Group CEO said in a statement.

According to Feinstein, Rwanda’s ICT industry has the potential to transform the country into a middle income economy.

"Although e-commerce is still relatively new in the market, it is growing rapidly thanks to the entry of international players and local start-ups. The government of Rwanda has made great strides to develop and encourage online payments by providing key services through e-government portals with the aim to make all transactions electronic by 2018., he added.

Mobile money is for example taking hold in the market and will no doubt contribute to the increased expansion and adoption of e-commerce in Rwanda, he explained.

Offer Gat, the DPO Group Chairman said, "Being awarded this certification shows we’ve complied with the highest standards of security in the industry. We serve a host of merchants in the hotel, airline, tours, schools, utilities, insurance, e-commerce and the travel industry and other sectors, thus we have to employ best practices for managing any business that comes into contact with credit card information.” 

In addition to the certification, Direct Pay Online has a state-of-the-art fraud prevention and risk management solution that has been developed by the group for the African market.

The solution features real time monitoring, fraudulent patterns detection, scoring module, blocking and blacklisting. This is also supported by a 24-hour fraud prevention team that monitors real time transactions. This technology supports real-time payments for cards, mobile money, customer to business and business to business payments within a single platform.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw