Mastercard and Moovn sign five-year deal to add card acceptance and prepaid cards to MoovnPay in East Africa

Mastercard and Moovn Technologies have signed a five-year strategic agreement, reported on 23 October 2026, to build Mastercard payment services into Moovn's MoovnPay wallet. The rollout covers Kenya, Tanzania and other African markets, and is aimed at ride-hailing riders and drivers as well as merchants and small businesses. Under the deal MoovnPay will offer virtual and physical prepaid Mastercard cards, card tokenisation, and online and in-app payment acceptance through Mastercard Payment Gateway Services. It will also add Mastercard's Pay Local service, peer-to-peer transfers and eligible cross-border remittances through Mastercard Move. Users of Shooga, Moovn's service for transfers, fundraising and donations, will get prepaid cards in the same wallet. Moovn has already launched Payment Gateway Services in Kenya. The partnership builds on Mastercard's Start Path Emerging Fintech programme, which selected MoovnPay in September 2025. The next phase will focus on the Shooga prepaid card range, wider Pay Local coverage in Kenya and Tanzania, and further tokenisation and wallet features. The deal matters for online sellers in East Africa because many customers are paid through mobile wallets rather than bank cards. Linking a wallet balance to a prepaid card and to gateway acceptance lets those customers pay card-accepting merchants online, and gives small merchants a way to take card payments without a separate acquiring contract.