Mastercard launches Africa Cybersecurity Centre for Nigeria

Mastercard has launched an Africa Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence, launching first in South Africa and Nigeria. The virtual hub will let banks, governments and businesses share threat intelligence, assess cyber risks and strengthen defences using tools from Recorded Future, which Mastercard bought in 2024. The move reflects Mastercard’s shift from pure payment processing to selling cyber‑security as a service, betting that trust will become as valuable as transactions as Africa’s digital economy heads toward $1.5 trillion by 2030. For Nigerian businesses and banks, the centre offers affordable access to global threat data that would otherwise be costly to build in‑house, helping them defend against rising ransomware and phishing attacks that already cost the continent over $3 billion since 2019. While this gives financial institutions a cheaper way to boost security, it squeezes standalone cyber‑security firms that now compete with a bundled offering from a payments giant. As digital payments grow across Africa, the intelligence gathered from each transaction will make the hub’s threat feeds more valuable, potentially shifting the security market toward integrated payment‑security platforms.

SOURCE: https://techcabal.com/2026/06/30/techcabal-daily-takealot-finally-delivers/