Africa’s First Mobile-Money Tap-to-Pay Launches in Tanzania

M-Pesa Africa and Vodacom Tanzania launched Africa’s first mobile-money tap-to-pay feature on March 17. It happened in a four-way deal with Paymentology and Visa. The service lets M-Pesa users pay at any Visa-enabled point-of-sale terminal, in Tanzania and internationally, using only an Android smartphone. No physical card is needed.

The feature runs inside the M-Pesa SuperApp. It turns the existing M-Pesa Visa Virtual Card into a contactless option. Paymentology handles tokenisation at the issuer level, so credentials never reach the terminal directly.

Tanzania’s mobile money market backs the commercial case. It recorded 76.5 million mobile money accounts as of December 2025. That is a 21% increase on the prior year, according to the launch announcement.

This is not the first time Paymentology and M-Pesa have worked together. They launched the GlobalPay Visa virtual card in Kenya in 2022, and Tanzania is the next step.

TGJ Take

Tanzanian operators on M-Pesa deposits will see more funded users as tap-to-pay enters daily use. That helps conversion, but it does not fix the withdrawal problem. M-Pesa payout speeds in Tanzania have not improved, and this launch does not change that. Operators who plan around that imbalance now will avoid player complaints later. Plan for strong deposits and slow cashouts.