Chinwendu Obienyi
CoralPay Technology Limited has deployed the C’Gate (CoralPay Payment Gateway and Processing) platform, which has been described as the first interoperable USSD and mobile payment processing platform, which assures seamless and secure payment (financial and non-financial) transaction processing.
The C’Gate platform is a composite payment-processing engine that allows customers using the USSD short codes of their respective banks, alongside their mobile apps to pay for goods and services directly from their bank accounts and wallets.
The transactions are accepted on point-of-sale (POS) terminals, automated teller machine (ATMs), smart and feature phones on e-commerce websites as well as ChatBots and has capabilities for card processing, telephony processing, account to account transfers, and several other forms of payments.
Speaking in an interview, the CEO, CoralPay Limited, Chioma Nkechika, explained that the C’Gate can best be described as super payment processing engine, designed and built based on varied experiences from across the globe. Embedding several global payment designs and standards into one processing base, as used in developing the solution.
Presently commercial banks, insurance companies, health sector operators, mobile money operators, other financial institutions and insurance companies have all adopted the payment solution. Some of the deposit money banks are GTBank, Zenith Bank, UBA Plc, First Bank, Access Bank, FCMB, Fidelity Bank, Wema Bank, Keystone Bank, Sterling Bank, and Providus Bank among others.
Nkechika explained further that, “For the insurance companies, the ease of collection of premiums from their customers across urban and rural locations has been a huge concern, it comes with a lot of difficulties due to logistics challenges and non-availability of sufficient secure payment points, which has now been solved with the C’Gate solution”.
“Also with the C’Gate, you are able to remotely and securely pay your premiums to the designated Insurance Company account for onward remittance to your specific purpose account. For our several partnerships in the health sector (private and public sector alike), payment and remittance of health insurance premiums, has been made more secure and simplified”.
Nkechika described “the one key feature of the C’Gate platform, that has been most interesting and novel, to be considered as the flagship product, is the ability to use your USSD payment code from any bank or OFI (other financial institutions) to pay remotely on any point of sale (PoS) terminal that has been deployed in the market today and a receipt printed.”