Ethiopia’s Arifpay Financial Technologies S.C. has signed partnership agreements with Visa and AVICOM to roll out 10,000 new point-of-sale (POS) terminals nationwide this year, marking the first phase of a larger programme to deploy up to 50,000 devices aimed at boosting digital payments among small and medium-sized businesses.
Visa will finance the acquisition of the POS terminals while AVICOM will assemble and supply the Android-based devices, Arifpay officials said at a signing ceremony in Addis Ababa. The deployment will target supermarkets, cafés, pharmacies and other SMEs that largely operate on a cash basis.
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The new terminals will accept domestic cards processed through EthSwitch, local mobile wallets and international cards, including Visa, enabling many small merchants to take payments from tourists and the Ethiopian diaspora for the first time. The devices also support QR payments, digital receipts, sales tracking and remote management via Arifpay’s cloud system.
Arifpay CEO Rediet Tsigeberhan said the partnerships marked “the key to unlock new opportunities for thousands of businesses,” adding that the company plans to introduce features such as subscription billing, instalment payments, partner split payments, and expanded utility payment options.
Arifpay processed 388 million birr through 350 POS machines over the past two years and is preparing to begin operations as a private switch operator in January. The firm, founded in 2021 with 270 million birr in paid-up capital, has expanded its service portfolio to 13 offerings, including e-commerce through its ArifShop platform.
A representative of AVICOM, one of Ethiopia’s oldest IT and telecom infrastructure suppliers, said the company would provide “high-quality” locally assembled terminals alongside hardware support.
Visa’s country manager for Ethiopia, Yared Endale, described the financing as an investment in Ethiopia’s economic infrastructure and a step toward linking SMEs to global commerce. Visa has been accelerating digital payment uptake in Ethiopia through bank partnerships, fintech support and merchant enablement programmes.
The push comes as digital payments continue to gain traction. EthSwitch, the national switch operator, reported 2.78 million interoperable POS transactions worth 7.2 billion birr in the 2024/25 fiscal year, a 24% increase from the previous year. A 2024 Visa study found that more than 80% of Ethiopian SMEs adopted digital payments within two years, though cash preference and perceived complexity remain obstacles.
Officials say the new terminals will offer same-day settlement, with work underway to enable real-time settlement — an improvement over the 24-hour or T+1 standard widely used in the market.
The rollout supports Ethiopia’s Digital Ethiopia 2025 strategy and the National Bank of Ethiopia’s target of building a cash-lite economy by 2030. If completed, the 50,000-terminal expansion would represent one of the largest private-sector digital payment infrastructure investments in the country to date.
Source: Shega & Birrmetrics
