Millicom (Stockholmsbörsen: MIC) and Kalixa announced the establishment of a joint venture to develop a payments service provider to operate in Africa and Latin America, initially commencing in Colombia and Brazil later this year.

The joint venture will offer payment acceptance services for both businesses and consumers, including payment gateway and point of sale solutions for merchants as well as 1-click payment and eWallet provision for online customers. The partnership will cover the end-to-end payment ecosystem and will offer multi-device and cross-platform services.

The joint venture will benefit from Millicom’s existing reach across Africa and Latin America through its high-profile “Tigo” infrastructures in fourteen countries and its online partnerships in 31 countries. It will also draw on Kalixa’s experience of providing a full range of payment services, including issuing, acquiring and acceptance solutions to over 8,000 merchants across 100 markets.

The initial phase of the joint venture will begin in H2 2014 and will provide an end-to-end service for ecommerce providers. Brazil is the largest market in Latin America with around 60% of its ecommerce by volume and 80% of the continent’s top 500 e-merchants present there. In Colombia, Millicom’s largest market in Latin America, ecommerce is growing significantly at over 60% annually with 50% of internet users enjoying online shopping.

Millicom’s CEO and President Hans-Holger Albrecht said, “Working with Kalixa will enable us to offer a complete digital payments service in markets where ecommerce is growing rapidly and where we already have a strong presence. It is a great combination of our respective expertise.”

Ed Chandler, CEO of Kalixa, commented, “As developing markets, Latin America and Africa represent a combined USD$1.7 trillion opportunity for the payments industry. Our partnership with Millicom is the first step in making payments easier for merchants and consumers in these regions by offering a connected service with the full spectrum of payment services being offered under one roof. As we have already seen in Europe, by removing unnecessary links in the chain we can service customers more efficiently. This allows us to pass the value back to help merchants capitalise on the digital explosion happening in this region.”