PayJoy, a San Francisco fintech startup, announced on Friday it has teamed up with mobile distributor Allied Mobile to bring affordable smartphone payment plans to markets across the continent of Africa. According to the duo, Allied Mobile will use PayJoy Checkout, an instant paperless finance system for customers without access to formal credit, and the patented PayJoy Lock which enables “pay-as-you-go” access to the phone. It was also reported:
“This partnership is significant as it solves fundamental barriers to mobile internet adoption in Africa. Africa is the least developed region in the world for mobile connectivity and adoption. More than half the population in Africa are using mobile services yet only a quarter are accessing the internet via mobile. According to research by the GSMA, over 500 million people in Africa are within signal range of mobile data towers, but are held back from internet access due to the high cost of smartphones.”
While sharing more details about the partnership, Jacqueline ColeCourtney, Allied Mobile Group CEO, stated:
“We are excited to work with PayJoy to extend our value-added service to include smartphone financing. Allied Mobile has operations across the fast-growing Sub-Sahara telecommunications market and is ideally positioned to capture growing needs of consumers. Making smartphones more affordable through manageable payment plans is one such need.”
Doug Ricket, CEO of PayJoy, added:
“We look forward to bringing PayJoy’s next-generation solution to Africa, to connect the next billion to the Internet and modern financial and digital services. We feel Allied Mobile is a fantastic partner considering their expertise as a value-adding independent specialist distributor in mobile devices.”