- Visa Connect Zambia brought together banks, fintechs and policymakers
- The next phase of digital payments depends on businesses, trust and working together
Lusaka, Zambia’s payments landscape is evolving rapidly. The opportunity now is to move beyond access to digital payments towards everyday use—expanding merchant acceptance, enabling small businesses to participate more fully in the digital economy and building trust through secure, reliable payment experiences.
This opportunity was central to discussions at Visa Connect Zambia, which brought together leaders from banks, fintechs, government and regulatory bodies to explore how to build an inclusive, secure payments ecosystem that supports growth.
The next frontier: business and commercial payments
“Consumer payments dominate digitization so far, but many of the biggest gains in efficiency and growth sit in business-to-business and commercial flows,” says Salome Makau, Group Country Manager for Visa Central Southern Africa. “Many Zambian businesses still rely on cash, and manual reconciliation for supplier payments, payroll and procurement, bringing delays, limited visibility and higher costs, especially for SMEs that work on thin margins.”
“The next chapter of digital payments in Zambia must extend beyond consumer transactions to how businesses pay and get paid. For SMEs and commercial businesses, the opportunity is to make everyday payments simpler and more useful, with better visibility and reconciliation so they can focus on serving customers and growing their businesses.”
Banks are best placed to unlock these flows by starting with what corporates struggle with: cash flow, working capital, payment visibility and admin burden. Collaboration across the ecosystem matters just as much.
“Corporate cards, virtual cards, digital supplier payments and integrated treasury tools can all help, but only if banks, fintechs and technology partners design them together,” Salome adds.
“We need to start with the business problem, not the payment product. Banks, fintechs and technology partners can work together to simplify supplier payments, improve reconciliation and give businesses greater visibility over their money. The priority is to identify a high-friction journey, co-design a practical solution and scale it when usage, trust and commercial value are proven.”
Beyond the card: Visa’s evolving role
For Zambia, a growing trade hub with strong regional and international links, faster, cheaper and more transparent cross-border payments can open new markets for exporters, support remittance flows and help local businesses join regional value chains.
Artificial intelligence and embedded finance are changing how and where people pay. Payments are moving into apps, platforms and checkout flows, sometimes without users noticing. AI-driven commerce is moving from concept to reality, where intelligent agents may increasingly start transactions for consumers.
With innovation, fraud is becoming more sophisticated, often using AI itself, and scams increasingly target consumers and businesses through social engineering rather than technical breaches. “Security can no longer be added afterwards. It has to be built in by design, through tokenisation, real-time risk scoring and strong authentication, sharing intelligence across the ecosystem,” Makau says. “Trust is the foundation for scaling digital payments. Security, operational resilience and transparency must be built into the customer experience from the start. As we explore new ways to pay, we must pair innovation with strong authentication, fraud controls and clear communication, so that consumers and businesses can use digital payments with confidence.”
Trust is central to progress too because digital payments only scale when people believe they are safe, reliable and worth using. For many Zambians, especially in rural and informal settings, the step from cash to digital still depends on confidence, education and access, and no single player can close that gap alone.
Successful financial inclusion needs coordinated effort from financial institutions to reach new segments; fintechs to bring agile, user-centric innovation and policymakers to enable forward-looking guidelines. A network like Visa then provides secure, interoperable infrastructure to facilitate safe payments. “Each party has a role to play,” Makau says.
Celebrating excellence: the Visa Connect Zambia Awards
The event also recognized the institutions who are already driving Zambia’s payments evolution. The winners are:
- Cross-Border Champion: First National Bank Zambia, for the largest contribution to cross-border payments and international commerce at scale.
- Digital Commerce Champion: Absa Bank Zambia, for leadership in e-commerce, merchant payments, digital acceptance and seamless digital payment experiences.
- Growth Champion: Indo-Zambia Bank, for exceptional business growth and market momentum.
- Financial Inclusion Award: ZANACO, for the greatest contribution to expanding access to digital financial services.
- Trusted Payments Excellence Award: Stanbic Bank Zambia, for secure, reliable and trusted payment experiences across payment performance, operational resilience, risk management and authorization effectiveness.
- Payments Ecosystem Leadership Award: Absa Bank Zambia, for leadership in ecosystem development through fintech partnerships, BIN sponsorships, co-brand initiatives and collaboration.
- Visa Collaborative Partner of the Year: ZANACO, for consistently strong partnership with Visa, including early adoption of Visa campaigns, products, capabilities and market initiatives.
- Business & Commercial Growth Award: First National Bank Zambia, for outstanding leadership in advancing business and commercial payments. The bank delivered the highest commercial payment volume and market share, generated the largest absolute increase in business spend, and kept growing its customer base, helping businesses digitize payments and take part more fully in the digital economy.
- Acquirer of the Year: Absa Bank Zambia, for leadership in merchant acquiring, acceptance expansion, merchant payment growth and digital commerce.
- Issuer of the Year: First National Bank Zambia, for the strongest overall issuing performance.
“First National Bank Zambia and Absa Bank Zambia received three awards each, and a huge congratulations to all the winners,” Salome Makau adds.
Looking ahead
“Our collective growth strategy centers on deeper customer engagement, everyday digital payments, and expanding usage among SMEs and commercial businesses. Looking ahead, our three priorities are to accelerate growth through wider activation and acceptance, protect momentum through stronger cybersecurity, fraud prevention and resilience, and prepare for what’s next in digital wallets, fintech and AI commerce, including stablecoins where regulation and market readiness allow.”