American Express is rolling out a business credit card in Nigeria, its first such product in the country.

The card offers business owners a spending limit of $10,000 and a repayment period of up to 45 days for international transactions, and comes as a result of a partnership with local neobank O3 Capital, according to a Thursday (May 9) Bloomberg report, which noted that the launch of the card could improve working capital access in the West African nation.

“The first-ever American Express Business Card in the most populous African country will give us another way to support local businesses with their growth aspirations,” Mohammed Badi, Amex’s president of global network services, said in a statement, according to the report.

“American Express is excited to continue to strengthen its presence in Nigeria and expand its reach across Africa,” Badi added.

Separately, Badi said that American Express has plans to expand its presence in Africa to 42 countries from its current 30, citing greater demand from consumers and small businesses, Bloomberg reported.

American Express and O3 are also launching cards for personal and household use, which will have spending limits between $10,000 and $20,000, the report added.

The O3 Amex card “solves the problem of queuing at banks for business travel allowance and the personal travel allowance,” said O3 Chief Executive Officer Abimbola Pinheiro, according to Bloomberg.

The neobank plans to issue 16,000 American Express cards by the end of the year and a million cards over the next five years, Pinheiro said. O3 also plans to offer them in other countries, including Rwanda, Congo and Ghana, where it hopes to issue Amex cards by the end of next year.

More companies in Africa — as well as in Central Europe and the Middle East — are seeking working capital solutions, according to PYMNTS Intelligence.

Fifty-eight percent of growth corporates in Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) had been using working capital solutions, according to PYMNTS Intelligence’s “CEMEA Edition” of our 2023-2024 Growth Corporates Working Capital Index series, which was commissioned by Visa and examines working capital usage among growth corporates in CEMEA.

That percentage is slated to grow to 95% in the coming months.

Of the firms that did access working capital solutions in the region, 77% seen improved business metrics and buyer-supplier relationships, PYMNTS found in the report.

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