Google and Verve are now letting Nigerians use Verve cards on the Play Store.
This will improve the country’s digital economy and make it easier to pay for things in the Google Play Store.
According to an announcement release, Google will now accept Verve card payments locally. This will make it easy for Nigerians to get Play Store apps.
Foreign purchases are hard for Nigerians. Some private banks stopped it, and others only let people spend $20 a month. A lot of people had to use Chipper Cash and pay high exchange rates.
The relationship between Google and Verve is a sign that foreign payment barriers are being broken down. The press release says that Verve Card Play Store sales happen locally. They will be paid in Nigerian Naira.
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A big step for the Play Store’s financial inclusion
The new agreement between Google and Verve will help millions of people in Nigeria. It will make it easy for them to use the Play Store’s many apps and services, among other things.
Google Play’s Head of Retail and Partnerships, Anthea Crawford, said of the deal, “We are excited to work with Verve to give more Nigerians access to Google Play. The fact that local payments can now be made with Verve cards is a big deal. It means that more Nigerians can join the app economy and get the apps they need.
In a similar way, Verve International’s Managing Director, Vincent Ogbunude, said that the union would help his company’s goal of financial inclusion a lot. He also thought that this would help Verve cardholders bridge the digital gap.
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About Verve and Google
Verve, a division of Interswitch, was started in 2009. After some changes in 2013, it became a separate business.
In 2005, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) told Nigeria’s payment business to switch from magnetic strips to EMV chips and PINs by 2009. When fraud was possible with magnetic strips, the CBN migration plan got rid of them. It gave out six million cards in partnership with many Nigerian banks.
Nigerian Verve makes cards. In 2013, Verve had “over 20 million cards in circulation” that could be used at more than 119,631 places of sale, 11,287 ATMs, and more than 1,000 online stores.
Google, an American multinational technology firm, specializes in artificial intelligence, internet advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, and consumer electronics.
It controls most of the market, collects a lot of data, and has artificial intelligence advantages, making it “the most powerful company in the world” and “one of the most valuable brands.” Google’s parent firm, Alphabet Inc., is a “Big Tech” corporation, along with Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were both getting their PhDs at Stanford at the time, started Google on September 4, 1998. Through super-voting stock, they control 56% of the voting power of the company’s stockholders and 14% of the shares that are traded on the stock market.
In 2004, the company went public. In 2015, Google was the only company that Alphabet Inc. owned. Google is the most important business for Alphabet.
On October 24, 2015, Sundar Pichai took over as CEO of Google from Larry Page. On December 3, 2019, Pichai became CEO of Alphabet.