Flutterwave, a payments technology company, has partnered with Amole, Ethiopia’s largest mobile Digital Wallet network, to allow money transfers into Ethiopia through Amole, to Amole Wallet, bank accounts, and cash pickup locations at over 2,500 locations across the world.
Amole provides its customers with digital payment options as well as access to digital goods and services, allowing them to complete purchases at their leisure.
The collaboration will benefit Ethiopia’s economy by making diaspora remittances easier for over 8 million Ethiopians living abroad, who send over $5 billion to Ethiopia per year.
Users consider Ethiopia’s remittance service to be costly, with manual paperwork and delays making it difficult and time consuming for Ethiopia’s diaspora community.
This collaboration addresses these issues by offering no-fee instant delivery of funds to recipients, as well as greater control over where and how money is sent, as well as regulatory transparency.
According to a study by the National Bank of Ethiopia, over 75% of Ethiopia’s population is unbanked, with Addis Ababa accounting for nearly 40% of all bank branches.
By facilitating remittances from diaspora Ethiopians, this partnership would broaden financial services to these underserved populations, thus expanding business opportunities for small and rising enterprises in these communities. As a result, users of the service will be able to collect cash from any of Amole’s 2,500 licensed agent locations, increasing financial inclusion in the region.
“We are delighted to be collaborating with Amole to allow digital remittances and cash pickup into Ethiopia,” Our partnership will ensure that Ethiopian companies are paid from all over the world, creating tremendous opportunities for business growth, which is a target that we are passionate about. This is just the beginning, and we intend to expand the reach of our collaboration to the good of all Africans.”Flutterwave Founder & Chief Executive Officer Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola said.
“We are pleased to partner with Flutterwave in providing critical forex that will help both our customers and Ethiopia,” Asfaw Alemu, CEO of Dashen Bank, said. This relationship will be critical in providing even more value to our diaspora community, connecting them to their homeland and expanding global eCommerce opportunities in the near future.”
“We are very excited to work with Flutterwave and leverage our combined technologies to expand our service to the Ethiopian Diaspora community, our customers, and merchants to allow cross-border remittance and commerce,” said Yemiru Chanyalew, CEO Moneta Technologies, SC. We are increasingly focusing on cashless and eCommerce payments at Amole. Our joint efforts to make remittance and eCommerce payments as smooth and interoperable as possible would help Ethiopia achieve much-needed financial inclusion.”
A sender outside Ethiopia enters the recipient’s data, the payment destination (Amole digital wallet, bank account, or cash pickup location anywhere in Ethiopia), and the security question and answer with which the receiver may access the funds if the preferred payment destination is through an Amole approved agent.
Read more on Tech Gist Africa:
Flutterwave and the Basketball Africa League have announced a multi-year partnership
Google Pay has partnered with Wise and Western Union to provide international money transfers
Flutterwave and Worldpay have partnered to expand payment processing in Africa
