Multi-currency cards are spreading across Africa. Here’s what Tanzania’s launch teaches Cameroon about partnerships, AI ops, and cross-border payments.
Multi-Currency Cards: What Cameroon Can Learn
Tanzania just got its first Mastercard World Elite debit card and a multi-currency prepaid card—launched by I&M Bank Tanzania with Mastercard and OpenWay. On paper, it sounds like “another premium card announcement.” In practice, it’s a clear signal of where African retail banking is going: digital-first, partnership-led, and built for cross-border life.
That matters in Cameroon right now. It’s late December 2025, and the holiday travel season is exposing the same pain points every year: currency conversion surprises, inconsistent acceptance across payment channels, and customer support teams stretched thin by “my card didn’t work” calls. The real story isn’t the card design or the perks. It’s the operating model behind it—one that Cameroon’s fintechs and telecom-led financial services can copy, improve, and scale with AI.
This post breaks down what Tanzania’s launch really tells us, how it connects to Cameroon’s mobile-first economy, and where AI in fintech and AI in telecommunications fits into making multi-currency payments actually work day-to-day.
The real product isn’t the card—it’s the partnership stack
The fastest way to launch advanced payment products in Africa is to combine three capabilities: a regulated issuer (bank), a global acceptance network (card scheme), and a modern payments platform (processor).
That’s exactly what the I&M Bank Tanzania + Mastercard + OpenWay partnership represents. The bank brings licensing, compliance, and distribution. Mastercard brings global rails and a recognized premium tier (World Elite). OpenWay’s Way4 platform brings the back-end capability to issue and manage products like multi-currency prepaid accounts.
Why this matters for Cameroon’s fintech playbook
Cameroon has plenty of innovation, but many teams still try to “build everything” inside one organization: issuing logic, fraud controls, dispute workflows, FX rules, customer servicing, and reporting. Most companies get this wrong. The hard part isn’t building a payment UI. The hard part is running the payments business reliably.
A partnership stack lets you:
- Launch faster without compromising compliance
- Add features (multi-currency, premium controls, tokenization) without rebuilding core systems
- Scale across channels: physical card, virtual card, in-app payments, and merchant payments
For telecoms in Cameroon offering mobile money or wallet services, the implication is direct: a telco doesn’t have to become a bank to offer bank-grade payment experiences—but it does need the right partners and the right orchestration layer.
Multi-currency cards solve a specific African problem: cross-border friction
A multi-currency prepaid card sounds like a “frequent flyer tool.” In African markets, it’s often a small business tool.
Here’s the reality I see repeatedly: importers, freelancers, students, and families deal with multiple currencies and inconsistent payment acceptance. They need predictability.
Tanzania’s multi-currency prepaid card reportedly supports ten currencies. The point isn’t the number. The point is the customer experience:
- Hold funds in multiple currencies
- Pay internationally without constant conversion
- Reduce “double conversion” fees (local currency → USD → destination currency)
Cameroon angle: multi-currency isn’t luxury—it's infrastructure
Cameroon sits at a regional intersection: CEMAC trade, diaspora flows, travel, online services, and cross-border procurement. A multi-currency product becomes especially practical when paired with:
- A wallet (for funding and daily payments)
- A card (for global acceptance and online checkout)
- An FX layer (transparent rates, clear fees)
If you’re building fintech products in Cameroon, don’t pitch multi-currency as prestige. Pitch it as cost control and reliability.
Where AI actually fits: make the product safer, cheaper, and easier to run
AI doesn’t “add” multi-currency. It makes multi-currency sustainable.
The dirty secret is that many payment products fail not because customers don’t want them, but because operations can’t keep up: fraud spikes, disputes pile up, compliance reviews drag, and support tickets explode.
1) AI for fraud prevention and transaction monitoring
Multi-currency and cross-border usage increases risk signals: unusual merchant locations, higher-ticket transactions, new device fingerprints, and rapid spending patterns.
AI helps by:
- Detecting anomalous behavior in real time
- Scoring transactions with more context than rule-based systems
- Reducing false declines (a major customer trust killer)
For Cameroon’s telcos and fintechs, this is where AI in telecommunications becomes an advantage: telcos often have strong signals (SIM tenure, device behavior, network patterns) that can improve fraud models—if privacy and consent are handled properly.
2) AI for smarter FX, pricing, and customer fairness
FX is where customers feel cheated, even when no one cheated them. If the app can’t explain what happened, trust drops.
AI can support:
- Personalized fee offers for high-value segments (without manual review)
- Alerts when conversion costs exceed a threshold
- Simulations like “If you pay in X currency vs Y currency, here’s the expected cost”
A practical stance: Cameroonian providers should treat FX transparency as a product feature, not a compliance checkbox.
3) AI for customer support automation that doesn’t annoy people
Holiday season is peak failure season: travel, international POS terminals, airline holds, and hotel deposits trigger confusing card behavior.
AI support should focus on the top repetitive issues:
- “Why was I charged twice?” (pending vs posted)
- “Why did my card decline abroad?”
- “Why is the exchange rate different from what I saw?”
Done well, AI reduces tickets and boosts trust. Done badly, it becomes a chatbot that loops people into anger. The bar is simple: if the assistant can’t resolve the issue within 60 seconds, it should escalate to a trained human with context.
Premium cards are a strategy: they change unit economics and loyalty
The Tanzania launch includes a World Elite debit card with benefits like concierge services, airport fast-track, travel insurance, hotel discounts, travel packages, and lounge access.
It’s easy to dismiss perks as “for the wealthy.” But premium tiers do something very concrete:
- They increase interchange and fee revenue (depending on market rules)
- They reduce churn because customers become invested in the benefits
- They justify better servicing (priority support, proactive risk controls)
Cameroon angle: premium tiers can fund inclusion (if you design it honestly)
Financial inclusion doesn’t mean every product must be low-margin. A healthier approach is a portfolio:
- Entry-level wallet for mass market
- Mid-tier debit for everyday spending
- Premium debit for frequent travelers, business owners, diaspora-linked households
If premium products are priced transparently, they can subsidize the investment in risk, compliance, and agent networks that power broader access.
“Cash-driven but growing digital” is a phase—Cameroon should plan for the next one
The source story notes that Tanzania is still largely cash-driven, but digital payments are growing in major cities. Cameroon is in a similar dual reality: cash and mobile money remain dominant for many daily transactions, while digital acceptance is expanding in urban centers and among younger, app-native customers.
The shift that catches teams off guard is the move from “digital payments exist” to “customers expect digital to work everywhere.” That means:
- Fewer outages
- Faster dispute handling
- Stronger fraud controls
- More acceptance points (online, POS, in-app)
AI helps here—but only if the underlying payment rails, reconciliation, and monitoring are sound.
What to copy from Tanzania’s approach (and what to avoid)
Copy this:
- Partnership-led speed: bank + network + processor
- Multi-currency as a practical tool for international transactions
- Premium segmentation with clear value
Avoid this:
- Launching perks without fixing support and dispute workflows
- Treating fraud as “a rules engine problem” only
- Shipping a multi-currency feature without explaining FX in plain language
A simple implementation checklist for Cameroonian fintechs and telcos
If you’re building a multi-currency card or wallet-card combo in Cameroon, here’s a grounded checklist I’d use.
Product and experience
- Define the top 3 use cases (travel, online subscriptions, procurement)
- Show FX rates and fees before confirmation
- Provide in-app receipts that explain: currency, rate, fee, and status (pending/posted)
Risk, compliance, and operations
- Real-time fraud monitoring with clear escalation paths
- Strong KYC/AML workflows that won’t block legitimate customers for weeks
- Dispute handling SLAs with proactive status updates
AI capabilities that pay off quickly
- Fraud anomaly detection tuned for cross-border patterns
- Support automation for top 10 payment issues
- Customer segmentation to offer the right tier (and avoid overselling premium)
A multi-currency card isn’t a feature. It’s a promise that your payments will still work when the customer leaves home.
What this means for the “AI + telecom + fintech” story in Cameroon
This post fits squarely into our series on How AI Is Transforming Telecommunications and Fintech in Cameroon because it highlights a key pattern: the winners won’t be the companies with the flashiest apps—they’ll be the ones that operate reliable financial products at scale, across borders, with better risk controls and better customer communication.
If Tanzania’s partnership tells us anything, it’s that Africa’s payment future will be built by teams that can combine regulated access, global rails, modern processing, and AI-driven operations. Cameroon’s ecosystem has the ingredients. The next step is execution.
If you’re planning a multi-currency card, a premium debit tier, or a telco-wallet that works outside Cameroon, what’s the missing piece in your stack right now: the partnerships, the processing layer, or the AI operations to keep it stable when usage spikes?