XtraPay & GIZ-Innovation Contest

The idea for XtraPay comes from an innovation competition, which the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (German Society for International Cooperation) launched among its employees at the beginning of 2017.

An international jury selected two winners out of 255 submitted ideas – XtraPay is one of them. As part of GIZ’s EZ-Scout program , we implement XtraPay together with the Federal Association for Wholesale, Foreign Trade and Services (BGA).With the EZ-Scout programme, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has been providing German companies with consultants with development policy know-how since 2012. They are active as contacts on development cooperation issues in trade associations, regional associations, chambers of industry and commerce and chambers of skilled trades.The GIZ Programme for the Promotion of Market-Oriented Agriculture (MOAP) is also an important local partner.

The Federal Association of Wholesale Trade, Foreign Trade, Services e.V. (BGA) represents 157,000 wholesale and foreign trade companies as well as related service providers with around 1.7 million employees and 60,000 trainees, who generate an annual turnover of over 1.8 trillion euros. The BGA network bundles the know-how of 46 industry associations as well as 23 state and regional associations and works locally, in Berlin and Brussels as well as in over 100 organisations worldwide for its companies for the general professional, economic and socio-political interests of our members. We pay particular attention to networking among our members. In addition, the BGA provides practical information on the effects of legislation on companies. Intensive press and public relations work accompanies the BGA’s lobbying activities.

XtraPay was piloted together with Görge Frischemärkte. The fresh markets are a family business from Braunschweig. In 1993 Otto Görge acquired three grocery stores – now there are ten. In order to cope with this expansion, Otto Görge took his brother Matthias Görge and his two daughters Andrea and Stephanie on board.

MTN Ghana provides us with the payment infrastructure. In this way, we ensure,that the money reaches the workers’ telephones as mobile money. MTN is Africa’s largest telecommunications provider, headquartered in South Africa. The company has around 217 million customers and is represented in 22 countries. MTN Mobile Money is a service provided by MTN in cooperation with partner banks. The service is provided by authorised agents who offer the service on behalf of Mobile Money Limited.