Pesapal Partners UnionPay to Expand POS Acceptance in EA

In Short

• Pesapal and UnionPay International signed a strategic partnership to expand UnionPay card acceptance across Pesapal’s POS merchant network.
• The rollout starts in Tanzania, then Rwanda.
• The companies said the deal adds UnionPay acceptance at more than 3,000 merchant locations across the two countries.

What Happened

Pesapal said it will enable UnionPay card payments across its point-of-sale network in East Africa. A POS is the card machine in a store, hotel, or restaurant that processes in-person payments.

The first launch market is Tanzania. Pesapal said UnionPay acceptance will expand across sectors linked to tourism and everyday commerce, including hospitality, retail, restaurants, transport, petroleum, and lifestyle merchants.

The partnership supports both contact and contactless payments. Contact payments use a chip insert, while contactless is tap-to-pay using a card or enabled device.

After Tanzania, the rollout is expected to move to Rwanda. Pesapal said the rollout expands UnionPay’s acceptance network by more than 3,000 merchant locations across Tanzania and Rwanda, positioning it as one of UnionPay’s larger acceptance expansions in East Africa.

Why It Matters

For merchants, accepting UnionPay can reduce payment friction for visitors who prefer paying by card, especially travellers from China and other markets where UnionPay is widely used. Less friction can mean fewer abandoned purchases and faster checkout.

For tourism businesses, card acceptance matters because high-value spending often happens in hotels, restaurants, and transport. If a traveller’s preferred card works at more places, more of that spending can stay within the local formal payment rails.

For the wider fintech and payments ecosystem, the deal highlights how “acquiring” networks work. An acquirer is the company that connects merchants to card schemes and settles funds, which is the behind-the-scenes plumbing that makes card payments possible at scale.