Mobile money payments are driving African digital commerce. Here’s how SA e-commerce teams can pair local payments with AI to lift conversion and retention.
Mobile Money Payments: AI Growth for SA Digital Sales
A lot of digital businesses still treat payments like plumbing: necessary, boring, and mostly somebody else’s problem. That mindset quietly caps growth—especially in Africa, where the “default” payment method often isn’t a card at all.
That’s why Xsolla adding Airtel Money in Tanzania and Madagascar matters far beyond gaming. It’s a clear signal that local, mobile-first payments are the real on-ramp to digital services in emerging markets—and a useful blueprint for South African e-commerce and digital service providers thinking about cross-border expansion.
This post is part of our “How AI Is Powering E-commerce and Digital Services in South Africa” series, and the link is practical: once you support the payment methods people actually use, AI can finally do its job—personalising offers, reducing drop-off, improving support, and increasing customer lifetime value.
Airtel Money + Xsolla: what actually changed (and why it’s big)
Answer first: Xsolla expanded its Airtel Mobile Money payment option to cover Tanzania and Madagascar, giving players a familiar way to pay using a mobile number via app or USSD, with instant payment confirmations.
Xsolla is a video game commerce platform (often operating as merchant of record) that helps game studios sell digital goods—think game downloads, subscriptions, in-game currency, battle passes, and top-ups. By adding Airtel Money in two additional countries, it’s removing a classic barrier in digital commerce: “I want this, but I can’t pay for it.”
The operational details in the announcement are the part that matters for anyone building digital services:
- Instant confirmations reduce the “Did it work?” anxiety that causes retries, support tickets, and chargebacks.
- Card-free checkout (app/USSD) expands access to customers who don’t use cards for online purchases.
- A trusted local brand lowers perceived risk. People are more willing to pay when the method feels familiar.
- Broader reach isn’t marketing fluff; it’s literally more reachable customers.
If you run a South African digital business—e-commerce, subscriptions, content platforms, online learning, SaaS, gaming, streaming—the message is blunt: payment coverage is distribution.
Mobile money is the e-commerce rails (cards are optional)
Answer first: In many African markets, mobile money isn’t an alternative—it’s the primary way consumers transact digitally, making it a growth prerequisite for online services.
South Africa’s online economy is relatively card-friendly compared to many neighbouring markets, but even locally, mobile-first behaviour dominates. And when South African businesses expand northward (or serve customers regionally), card-only strategies fail fast.
Here’s what I’ve seen in practice: teams obsess over acquisition funnels, ad creative, and product UX, then lose the customer at the final step because the payment method doesn’t match reality. A “perfect” checkout that only supports cards can still be the wrong checkout.
Why local payment methods outperform “global defaults”
Local payment options (including mobile wallets and USSD flows) win because they:
- Match how people store value (wallet balances vs credit lines)
- Fit infrastructure constraints (intermittent connectivity, limited device storage, older phones)
- Reduce trust friction (users know the brand and the flow)
- Lower data entry (mobile number + PIN beats typing card details)
For digital services—especially gaming—this is amplified. Gaming purchases are often smaller and more frequent. If paying is tedious, players simply don’t.
Where AI fits: turning “payment access” into “revenue growth”
Answer first: Once mobile money is available, AI improves revenue by reducing checkout drop-off, personalising offers, detecting fraud, and automating customer support around payment issues.
Payments enable the transaction; AI improves the odds it happens again and again.
AI use case 1: Predict and prevent checkout drop-off
When you add mobile money options, your funnel changes. AI models can identify drop-off patterns by:
- device type and connection quality
- time of day (paydays and evening spikes are real)
- payment method preference by segment
- first-time vs returning payer behaviour
Practical example: if a customer segment consistently abandons when asked to “add a card,” your model can route them to mobile money-first checkout, or preselect the most likely successful option.
A stance worth taking: checkout should be adaptive, not static. South African platforms that keep a single payment flow for every user are leaving money on the table.
AI use case 2: Smarter offers that match wallet behaviour
Mobile money users often top up in bursts and spend in bursts. AI can:
- time promotions around likely wallet balance replenishment
- recommend the “right-sized” bundle (not always the biggest)
- tailor pricing experiments by region without breaking trust
In gaming, this looks like personalised bundles for in-game currency. In broader e-commerce, it’s cart-size nudges (“add one more item to qualify for delivery”) that are timed when the user is most likely to have available balance.
AI use case 3: Fraud and risk scoring that respects local patterns
Mobile money reduces some card fraud vectors but introduces others (account takeovers, SIM-swap related risk, social engineering). AI-based risk scoring can flag:
- unusual purchase frequency
- mismatched device and account history
- repeated failed payment attempts that indicate automation
The goal isn’t to block customers aggressively. It’s to reduce false declines while catching clear abuse. False declines hurt more in emerging markets because reacquisition is expensive and trust is fragile.
AI use case 4: Support automation for “payment confusion”
When you expand payment methods, support tickets typically rise before they fall—because customers try the new option, get stuck, and ask for help.
AI support (chat + workflow automation) can:
- interpret “I paid but didn’t get my item” and check confirmation status
- guide USSD steps for specific networks
- trigger instant refunds or escalation when confirmation doesn’t arrive
If you sell digital goods, speed matters: nobody wants to wait 24 hours for an in-game item on Christmas week.
What South African e-commerce and digital services should copy
Answer first: Copy the principle, not the press release: prioritise local payment coverage, then use AI to optimise conversion, retention, and trust.
Xsolla’s move is about Tanzania and Madagascar, but the playbook applies directly to South Africa’s digital economy and regional ambitions.
1) Treat payments as a product feature
If payments are “just finance,” they’ll never get roadmap time. Make them a growth KPI.
What to measure weekly:
- payment method conversion rate (by method, by device)
- time-to-confirmation
- refund rate and dispute rate
- drop-off step analysis (where exactly users quit)
2) Offer mobile-first flows that don’t punish low-bandwidth users
USSD is not glamorous, but it’s reliable. If your audience includes users outside major metros—or you’re expanding into markets with varied infrastructure—design for:
- short, clear instructions
- low data usage
- minimal page weight
- recovery flows when a session times out
3) Build “payment localisation” into expansion planning
South African businesses often expand with a marketing plan first and payments last. Reverse that.
A practical sequencing I recommend:
- confirm top local payment methods (wallets, bank transfer variants, vouchers)
- integrate and test confirmation and refund flows
- only then scale acquisition spend
Otherwise you’ll buy traffic you can’t monetise.
4) Use AI to choose the right payment default per user
This is one of the cleanest conversion wins available.
Implement an AI-driven “best next payment method” selector using:
- user history
- region/network signals (where available)
- device/browser characteristics
- prior success rates by cohort
Even simple models outperform “show everything equally” because choice overload is real.
Snippet-worthy truth: Payment choice isn’t freedom if it creates hesitation; the best checkout quietly makes the right choice for the user.
People also ask: common questions teams raise in payment projects
Is mobile money only relevant for gaming?
No. Gaming makes the impact obvious because purchases are frequent, but any digital service—subscriptions, online courses, streaming, SaaS add-ons, creator tools—benefits when customers can pay the way they already transact.
Will adding more payment methods increase complexity?
Yes, at first. But complexity is manageable if you standardise around:
- consistent confirmation states
- consistent refund policies
- observability (logs, dashboards, alerting)
The bigger risk is the hidden complexity of not offering the right methods: higher CAC, lower conversion, and a support team buried in “payment failed” emails.
Where should AI start if we’re new to it?
Start at the bottlenecks that affect revenue quickly:
- drop-off prediction and checkout optimisation
- support automation for payment issues
- fraud/risk scoring tuned to your market
These are measurable, testable, and tie directly to leads and revenue.
The real takeaway for South African digital leaders
Xsolla’s Airtel Money expansion is a payments story, but it’s also a growth story: digital commerce expands when trust and accessibility expand. South Africa has one of Africa’s most advanced digital economies, which means local companies are well-positioned to export services—if they stop assuming cards are the universal answer.
If you’re building e-commerce or digital services in South Africa and you want more leads, better conversion, and stronger retention, treat this as a two-part system:
- Local payment methods (including mobile money) remove the “can’t pay” barrier.
- AI in e-commerce turns that access into repeatable revenue through smarter checkout, personalisation, and support.
If 2026 is the year you expand into new African markets—or simply want to sell more to mobile-first customers—what would change in your business if your checkout started behaving like your best salesperson instead of a static form?