For businesses of all kinds, Ozow has a payment feature. Inclusivity seems to be its strength. Whether for payouts, refunds, online payment, South Africans trust Ozow. Thousands of online businesses rely on the payment platform across the country and since its inception in 2014, it has merited its way to the top in the list of South African payment services and consistently grows 100% year after year.
Ozow, earlier known as i-Pay, was founded by Thomas Pays, Mitchan Adams, and Lyle Eckstein. As of 2021, the payment conglomerate was estimated to be worth anything from between $192 -$288 million. This speaks voluminously about its wide acceptance and growth.
Transactions are cardless and lightning fast with Ozow. This article takes you deeper into how Ozow is thriving in South Africa and some of the innovative features and remarkable benefits that make it standout.
Benefits of using Ozow
With a dedication to simplicity, security and inclusivity, Ozow is improving the quality of payments in South Africa. We dive deeper into details below;
EFT payments
Ozow connects 47 million bank accounts across South Africa allowing people to move funds seamlessly from bank to bank. This enables instant transactions against the typical waiting periods of checks or wire transfer. What Ozow did was to automate the manual EFT processes previously used for peer-to-peer, ecommerce and point-of-sale payments. It has since become one of the popular providers of EFT payment gateway services in South Africa, if not the major.
Security
Security is paramount and Ozow has done something spectacular in this regard catering to this area both from the technical and regulatory angles. It uses encryption every step of the way and also employs the use of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data to send information. It uses MFA (multi factor authentication). Of course, Ozow is PCI DSS Level 1 compliant. It also monitors transactions and keeps tabs on user behaviour to spot unusual activities.
Individual and business oriented
Ozow is defined by versatility with features suited for businesses and individuals. For individuals, it has user-friendly platforms and features like Ozow.me that allows people to pay, get paid, and sort bills easily. On Ozow.me for example, people can request to get paid from friends via whatsapp. Ozow.me is still in its Beta stage.
For businesses, Ozow allows integrations into platforms via plugins and APIs and expands their payment acceptances even via PIN (Ozow PIN). With Ozow, businesses can easily handle refunds, and payouts and track their financial activities on an intuitive interface.
How to Connect
Getting started on Ozow requires a few steps and differs depending on whether you’re a merchant, business, or individual. As a merchant, you’d need to visit the official website, click on the ‘become a merchant” button, and then go through a few text boxes.
As an individual, here’s how to start using Ozow below:
- Choose Ozow online or in-shop
- Choose your bank
- Login and select your desired debit account
- Accept the two-factor authentication (Payment is complete)
