It appears that PayPal may be finally warming up to Africa!

As Appfrica, once noted, PayPal’s dealings with Africa have been less than impressive, to say the least. However, it appears that rumors, which have been more recently confirmed are that First National Bank (SA) is in some kind of negotiations with PayPal to bring the online payment platform to South Africa (Probably even as soon as April – check out the video below).

This is not only interesting given the (scanty) evidence that the world is beginning to take Africa as a (somewhat) serious market but also has some probable implications to current innovations around the use of mobile payment systems such as MPESA as an online payment platform. What if PayPal launched in Kenya in a few weeks? Providing all the facilities for online payment and a global footprint?  What would that do to these upstarts? Would they be able to innovate fast enough? Would they be overtaken or would they come up with some ingenious technology that PayPal itself could be interested in to extend their footprint in Africa through mobile payments?… These are all hypothetical, probably out of complete context, questions but still… it makes you thin – hmm….