The Challenge

Our client is a regulated and licensed card processing and payment service provider and one of the leaders in digital payments and card processing in the Middle East and Africa.  

The client engaged Edgar, Dunn & Company for support in developing a cohesive strategy that addresses its questions about revenue growth, customers, market presence and operations in the near future. The company sought to leverage its parentage to the National Switch to fuel its future growth and wished to assess the viability of investing in its own technology platform in the context of new opportunities and review & discuss the opportunity to revise its Vision and Mission in light of the project’s outcome.

The 5 year corporate strategy comprised the following elements:

• Key markets and market size
• Growth potential for next 5 years
• High potential products, key distribution channels and operations requirements to meet targets

• Operations and other enabling requirements

How EDC helped

EDC reviewed the client’s existing issuing & acquiring product portfolio including product pipeline as well as typical product development process and analysed differences at country level.  

After producing a detailed internal assessment diagnostic report, EDC conducted a market assessment for the Middle East & Africa by main cluster (i.e. North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa, South Africa, etc.). EDC identified key global & regional trends (e.g. market structure, main use cases, economics, latest developments / launches / alliances, etc. ) outlining differences by region and assessing the applicability of these trends to the MEA region.  

EDC also analysed key global & regional competitors by client segment (i.e. tier-1 banks, challenger banks, non-Financial Institutions, etc.) and reviewed/benchmarked their solutions offering. Other critical activities during the engagement included identifying and outlining key regulatory situations & trends by region (e.g. local switching mandates, national payment scheme / switch presence, interchange regulation, data protection mandates, mobile money clearance, etc.) as well as performing a SWOT analysis for the client.  

EDC consolidated all findings & analysis and developed a list of prioritized opportunities as well as an initial map of the future strategy based on an innovation matrix (incremental, quick win, game changer, etc.), including use cases, segments & customer focus, products & services opportunities and targeted geographies.  

Finally, we provided our client with a detailed 5-year business model including all products and geographies. Revenue & cost drivers and pricing were defined based on current pricing, client feedback, market analysis and EDC expertise and the 5-year business case was derived taking into account revenue pools and capex.