Processes payments, collects and disburses funds and manages fx conversion for cross-border digital merchants and E-commerce businesses
Our Solutions
Offering localized and compliant solutions for cross-border merchants wishing to access the largest countries in Africa
Reduce operational costs, maximizing revenue and increase reach through one integration covering two thirds of African GDP
Customers can focus on their core business while Cross Switch manages their technology needs and all local operational issues
Merchant can offer most preferred local payment methods to its customers
Local cards, bank transfers, cash and e-wallets
Highest conversion rates in the market
Merchant can reduce drop off rates at their billing page to close to 0%
Fully compliant with local regulations (including tax, Central Bank and other regulatory agencies)
PCI Compliant payments platform
Process Flow
Enabling global merchants to capture market share in high growth, complex African markets
A total solution for handling local market complexity – fraud, tax, compliance, chargebacks, FX and repatriation
Barriers To Entry
Regulations And
Compliance
Compliance
Complex local regulations and approvals along with challenging local
taxes can hinder barrier to entry
Time and investment is spent on compliant infrastructure and obtaining neccessary regulatory approvals
Time and investment is spent on compliant infrastructure and obtaining neccessary regulatory approvals
Technology
Hurdles
Hurdles
Most global payment solutions do not offer coverage for African
infrastructure and engineering resources restrict merchant expansion to
global markets
Our Countries
Learn more about our focus countries
Foreign Exchange
FX, Liquidity and Latency
Cross Switch has partnered with branches of leading international banks and local banks to develop its African banking network. To achieve competitive FX rates and to fully understand liquidity issues, processes and latency in each country
Cross-border transactions typically have to be conducted through a
commercial bank or sponsoring ‘authorised dealer’ in the relevant
market with ‘authorisations’ or ‘pre-clearances’ from Central Banks
(or their agencies).
Other African countries may not require authorisations per-se for
repatriation, but reporting requirements may exist
Liquidity ranges from ‘good’ to ‘challenging’ depending on the
market and the current political/economic environment in a country.
Often corelated to a country’s FX reserves, commodity prices (in
particular oil and gold), elections and events such as bond
repayments and debt refinancings can have significant bearings on
liquidity and latency
Some currency pairs have remained in a 10% corridor over the past 5
years while others have fluctuated as much as 50%. Daily spot
volumes differ substantially from country to country and within a
country depending on numerous events.
Cross Switch strives to understand currency risk and associated
issues through close ties with Central Banks and its commercial
banking partners
Supporting documentation may be required (contracts, invoices, tax
clearance) to initiate foreign exchange transactions and
repatriation out of an African country
Typical there will be a lag between commencement of a payment
process and repatriation in many African markets. Cross Switch
endeavors to achieve as efficient fx and repatriation as possible by
working with its banks and the regulators to reduce latency to a
minimum
Tax
Cross Switch has worked with global tax advisors and their local offices, to understand the key tax considerations for our clients when supplying digital services to consumers across the African continent.
Cross Switch continues to consult with local tax authorities to
ensure it remains up to date with the local tax legislation and
developments to achieve compliance, transparency and the required
tax, reporting, filings and payments
Cross Switch has detailed information on the tax position across its
six main African focus countries. Our tax reports set out any value
added tax (VAT) and withholding tax (WHT) considerations applicable
in each country. Other African markets are under consideration
Based on the advice that has been received to date, one of the key
considerations when determining the correct tax treatment is to
identify whether our Merchant services are being sold to business
customers or private individuals
From a WHT perspective, the rate of WHT will be determined based
upon which entity is supplying the service and receiving payment for
those services. It is also important to confirm where this entity is
established for tax purposes
The way in which tax authorities seek to collect tax on digital services is evolving quickly in Africa. As an example, South Africa has introduced new legislation to ensure tax is collected in country. Our discussions with the Nigerian, Moroccan and Ghanaian tax authorities have also shown that this is an area of significant interest to them