Today Finextra reported that:

• MasterCard has struck a deal with Blue Label Telecoms to bring point-of-sale devices to 22,000 small traders and rural shops across South Africa. Blue Label already provides POS terminals to South African retailers but they are are used predominantly to sell pre-paid vouchers for things such as mobile phone airtime and electricity.
• the MasterCard deal will see 15,000 new EMV-certified terminals rolled out to traders, enabling them for the first time to accept chip and PIN and contactless payment cards.
• another 7000 existing terminals will be upgraded using MasterCard Mobile software, enabling cardholders to use their PIN-based debit, cheque or credit card issued by Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank or the South African Social Security Agency and their mobile phone to pay for their purchases in-store.

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The roll-out of small POS terminals in the emerging markets and the mobile phone adaptors such as iZettle adaptro (backed by MasterCard and Amex) and the Square adaptor running by MasterCard and VISA‘s mobile software are opening up untouched markets. These new systems don’t require the consumers to have bank accounts.

In your emerging markets, whom could you partner with to open up new sales and marketing channels?