Mobile Finance

Is Vietnam edging closer to mobile money adoption? That appears to be the case after the announcement of an extension to the existing mobile money service pilot.

Payments fintech company Cellulant has obtained initial approval as a Payment Service Provider and Payment Facilitator in Egypt.

It looks like the mobile money service that helped to make Safaricom the dominant player in Kenya is making reasonable headway in Ethiopia too.

A new report from Google parent company Alphabet stated the digital economy of Vietnam is expected to grow 20% per year between 2023 to 2025, reaching a total of US$45 billion. 

Airtel Money Tanzania has partnered with cross-border payments network TerraPay to enable its customers to pay for purchases in the United Arab Emirates.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) says it’s collaborating with Setara Networks (a.k.a. Tara) to launch zero-fee instant transaction features to further accelerate the adoption of digital payments in Indonesia.

Indonesian fintech firm Yokke has formed a strategic partnership with Japan’s SB Payment Service Corp, a unit of SoftBank.

Text and voice service WhatsApp has expanded its fast-growing payment offering in its biggest market with this week’s news that it has launched an in-chat payments service for businesses in India.

Brazilian fintech firm EBANX is expanding into eight new African markets.

Nagad Limited, a mobile financial service provider in Bangladesh, has joined forces with TerraPay, a global payments network. The aim, the partners say, is “to revolutionize the landscape of cross-border remittances”.

IDEMIA, a major name in identity technologies and biometric solutions, has partnered with Airtel Payments Bank, which serves over 40 million customers through its digital platform and a retail-based distribution network, and HMD Global, the exclusive licensee of the Nokia brand for phones, tablets and accessories, to expand the reach of offline CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) payments in India.

Global analytics software provider FICO has announced a partnership with telecom and mobile financial services solutions provider LigaData to bring advanced decision management and optimisation tools to telecommunications firms in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Operator MTN South Africa has announced a move into a new area of financial services. It has launched funeral cover to South African consumers under its new Khava brand – via WhatsApp.

You might reasonably expect that cab passengers using the Uber ride-hailing app in Kenya could already pay for trips via Safaricom’s mobile payment service M-Pesa – but you would be wrong; the arrival of the service was announced this week.

Mobile money growth continues across Africa. Two recent announcements, from IDT Corporation, a global fintech company, and from TerraPay, a leading global payments infrastructure company partnering with operator Safaricom, are the latest example of companies targeting consumers in Africa – and notably the remittance market.

TerraPay has partnered with Morocco’s Attijariwafa Bank to facilitate real-time and seamless global money transfers directly to bank accounts in Morocco.

Cashless innovation continues across Africa. This time Kenyan bank KCB is partnering with payment giant Visa and technology company Thales to enable contactless payment transactions.

Pan-African service provider Vodacom has been busy with payment services both in South Africa, with extensions to the operator’s VodaPay super app, and regionally, with a managed payment service.

Solomon Islands operator Our Telekom has launched its “highly anticipated” mobile money service, M-SELEN.

Vodafone Fiji has extended its partnership with Paymentology to enable the issue of Mastercard digital first cards to its customers via the M-PAiSA app.

Ecobank Kenya, in collaboration with Fingo, a Kenyan fintech, has unveiled the Fingo Africa banking app, aimed at young people. Launched last week in Nairobi, the app will roll out across Ecobank’s pan-African footprint of 33 countries as well as France, the UK, the UAE and China.

Africell has launched its mobile money platform Afrimoney in Angola as the operator highlighted low mobile finance penetration in the country in its pursuit of growth.  

Mobile money accounts grew 13% to 1.6 billion in 2022 as daily transactions reached in value of US$3.45 billion, according to trade body the GSMA.

Meta Platforms launched a payments tool in WhatsApp designed for SMEs in Brazil, with plans in future to roll out the feature in other markets.

Published last week but now attracting attention from many African news resources is a Vodacom Group paper arguing that mobile money taxation could hamper financial inclusion gains in Africa.

Bharti Airtel, one of India’s biggest telecommunications service providers, has partnered with India Post Payments Bank (IPPB), a division of India Post, to launch WhatsApp banking services for IPPB customers, enabling them to access banking services on their mobile phone.

African digital payments network MFS Africa has announced another deal targeting the remittance market. This time it is partnering Nigeria’s Access Bank to enable outward remittances from Kenya and Nigeria.

Bangladeshi mobile money firm bKash has extended its existing partnership with Huawei.

Recent announcements in Africa have yet again underlined the growth of payment technology across the continent, with major names in the digital payments space announcing significant agreements in Egypt and Tanzania.

The African Development Fund’s Board of Directors has approved $3.9 million grant to finance an upgrade of Liberia's payments infrastructure and systems project.