Pesawise: Unified Payment Infrastructure for Digital Commerce Across Africa
At Pesawise, Microsoft technologies form a key part of both our infrastructure and our long-term product strategy as we continue scaling payment infrastructure across Africa.
Some of the core Microsoft technologies and services we currently leverage include:
- Microsoft Azure for our cloud infrastructure, scalability, security, and high-availability deployments.
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and containerized microservices architecture to support scalable transaction processing and rapid deployment cycles.
- Azure Event Hubs and messaging infrastructure for high-throughput event streaming and real-time transaction processing.
- Azure AI Services as part of our ongoing work around fraud monitoring, intelligent automation, and identity verification workflows.
- Microsoft for Startups support programmes, which have played an important role in accelerating our cloud and AI adoption journey.
One example of impact has been our ability to rapidly scale transaction processing and merchant onboarding across multiple payment channels – including card acquiring, mobile money, QR payments, and virtual accounts – while maintaining high availability and operational resilience.
Using Azure’s scalable infrastructure and managed services, Pesawise today processes millions of dollars in monthly payment volume for enterprise merchants and fintech partners across Kenya and the wider region. Azure’s flexibility has also enabled us to deploy new integrations and services significantly faster, while maintaining enterprise-grade security and compliance standards required for regulated financial services operations.
Additionally, Microsoft technologies have enabled us to:
- Improve deployment speed and engineering efficiency through cloud-native infrastructure.
- Enhance reporting and analytics capabilities for merchants and internal operations.
- Support real-time reconciliation, ledgering, and transaction visibility across multiple payment rails.
- Build scalable APIs and integrations for enterprise customers and financial institutions.
As we continue growing, we also see strong strategic alignment with Microsoft around AI enablement, cloud optimisation, and building resilient digital financial infrastructure for emerging markets.