Streamlining Verve’s certification process.

About Verve

Verve International is a pan-African payment scheme which aims to make payments quick, affordable, reliable and available to all. Established in 2009, Verve is issued and  accepted across Africa and beyond, making it the biggest and fastest growing payment scheme in the continent. With over 280 members and more than 50 million payment cards in the market, it powers chip-based cards, mobile solutions, the eNaira Card (Nigerian CBDC), virtual cards and more.

The challenge

Payment innovation in Africa continues to grow and is key to increasing financial inclusion across the continent. As a key player in the African payments ecosystem, Verve needs to move quickly to meet the increasing appetite for digitized payments. Additionally, operating in a number of different African countries means that the scheme needs to be able to offer multiple payment methods to meet varying preferences across regions. It therefore must be able to manage a high volume of payment certification projects with varying requirements.

Fime’s unparalleled expertise transformed our certification process, making it both seamless and secure. This saved both significant time and costs for us and our members. 

Customer requirements

To streamline its certification process, Verve required a new, optimized platform that could allow scheme members to onboard themselves quickly, easily, and efficiently. This was key to helping stakeholders ensure interoperability according to Verve’s specifications, as well as compliance with industry requirements and best practices.

It was important that the certification platform was flexible and scalable, to ensure that it could support Verve’s long-term payment innovation strategy to boost financial inclusion with new technologies. Verve also required Fime’s expert support to operate the platform and help end-users throughout the certification process to minimize complexity and the time taken to complete this process.

Fime’s solution

Fime’s MyTest Process module, part of the Fime Test Factory platform, allowed Verve to automate the certification process through a bespoke cloud-based and workflow driven portal.

This approach ensured that Verve was able to provide the same simple and secure user journey for all its members’ certification projects, regardless of the product being certified. The centralized platform facilitated seamless project lifecycle management, giving users on-demand access to key data about their certification projects. It also provided customers with a direct interface with Fime or Verve team members, so they could access expert support when required.

As well as providing the platform itself, Fime offered comprehensive and integrated managed testing and certification services, enabling Verve to focus on innovation and customer satisfaction.

Working with Fime

Throughout the project, Fime:

• Ran reliable and high-quality automated testing and certification programs, enabling Verve to simplify the onboarding, issuance and payment validation processes.
• Provided a system that is easy-to-use and scalable to allow the continuous integration of new technologies, such as mobile payments, authentication, biometrics, CBDCs, instant payments, and more.
• Provided a reactive and agile certification process, which decreased timeto-market and helped Verve gain a competitive edge over stakeholders using manual certification processes.