Western Union has partnered with MFS Africa to bring mobile money transfers across the continent.
The partnership will allow Western Union users in 200 countries around the world to send funds to the more than 400 million mobile wallets on the MFS network, the companies said in a statement shared with African fintech news source Benjamin Dada and others was announced on Friday (3 March). .
The service will be launched in Madagascar before moving to other African countries and comes as global money transfer giant Western Union works to expand its remittance business.
It will also help MFS Africa in its mission to simplify payments, said Kumar Shourav, the company’s managing director of money transfer companies.
“Payment infrastructures around the world have traditionally remained fragmented and local in nature,” Shourav said.
“Africa’s 54 countries are not only diverse in terms of population, level of development, growth rates and stability, but also in terms of payment infrastructure and regulations.”
PYMNTS spoke to Dare Okoudjou, Founder and CEO of MFS Africa last year about the company’s efforts to correct the imbalance African consumers face when it comes to payments, arguing that nobody should be restricted based on where they live.
The interview comes shortly after his company acquired American fintech Global Technology Partners to give millions of cardless African consumers access to global companies like Netflix and Amazon.
“[That way] If I have to subscribe to Netflix, Netflix doesn’t have to do the hard work of accepting or customizing the UI to accept mobile money. I can just enter my Visa or Mastercard credentials and MFS Africa as the issuing bank can authorize this transaction and withdraw the funds,” Okoudjou told PYMNTS.
Western Union, meanwhile, is in the midst of its “Evolve 2025” strategy, as PYMNTS has written, which aims to modernize its business model and product offering.
According to CEO Devin McGranahan, this means “designing and delivering products that drive financial inclusion and enable our clients to climb the ladder of financial well-being” to establish the company as “the leading provider of accessible, branded financial services for the emerging… to establish population”. of the world.”
To achieve this goal, the company plans to expand its financial ecosystem by launching its digital banking and digital wallet services in a number of new markets in 2023.
Last week, Western Union partnered with 7-Eleven Mexico to capture that country’s $53 billion remittance market.
Get our hottest stories delivered to your inbox.
Sign up for the PYMNTS.com newsletter for updates on top stories and viral hits.
PYMNTS Data: Why Consumers Are Trying Digital Wallets
A PYMNTS study, New Payments Options: Why Consumers Are Trying Digital Wallets, finds that 52% of US consumers have tried a new payment method in 2022, with many choosing to try digital wallets for the first time.
