Direct Pay Online group (DPO) is the first payment service provider (PSP) in Africa to receive the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Level 1 certification in 12 African countries.
This comes after the successful completion of comprehensive audits in the group’s global headquarters and all its other markets including South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Namibia, Rwanda, Botswana, Ghana, Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe. In Africa, the DPO headquarters in Kenya and the team on the ground runs all other markets with the support of local branches and teams.
PCI DSS is the highest privacy and security standard in the payments industry and applies to entities that store, process or transmit cardholder data or sensitive authentication data. The certification is administered by the PCI DSS Council, which was founded by Visa, MasterCard Worldwide, American Express, Discover Financial Service and JCB International.
“As DPO, our goal is to keep up with the highest level of security, privacy and standards, in any market we go into,” says group CEO, Eran Feinstein. “We process merchant payments from all major credit cards, mobile money and e-wallets, and ensure that their data is protected. This compliance certificate demonstrates that our systems are up to par with international security standards.”
Offer Gat, DPO group chairman, adds: “Being awarded this certification shows we’ve complied with the highest standards of security in the industry. We serve a host of merchants in the hotel, airline, tours, schools, utilities, insurance, e-commerce and the travel industry and other sectors, thus we have to employ best practices for managing any business that comes into contact with credit card information.”
In addition to the certification, DPO has a state-of-the-art fraud prevention and risk management solution that has been developed by the group for the African market. The solution features realtime monitoring, fraudulent patterns detection, scoring module, blocking and blacklisting. This is also supported by a 24-hour fraud prevention team that monitors realtime transactions. This technology supports realtime payments for cards, mobile money, customer to business & business to business payments within a single platform.
DPO also provides a solution that fills the gap between the merchant and their customers. The solution enables merchants to launch various modes of payment including online invoicing, website integration and virtual terminals, and accept all forms of payment including major cards, e-wallets and cross-border mobile money. The platform also accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, M-PESA, Airtel Money, MTN Money, Tigo & mVisa.