It is great times for African Fintech as a partnership was announced between M-PESA and Western Union. This partnership opens up 21 million active M-PESA users to over half a million Western Union agents and the ability to transfer money across the world using only their mobile phones.
In a discourse with the Chief Financial Services Officer, Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, he said “M-PESA Global seeks to connect Kenyans to opportunities by making it easy and seamless for them to transact with the world and for the world to transact with Kenyans”.
Currently, users can send money to Britain, Germany and the UAE. Other countries will be added subsequently.
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M-PESA, which is owned by Safaricom and which is in turn, owned by Vodacom and Vodafone has a subscriber base of over 30 million people and is a major player in the Kenyan Telecommunication scene. Vodacom sees M-PESA as a service that offers a real competitive edge and because of this, it continues to innovate and evolve the M-PESA service.
They have integrated M-PESA with Google Play Store and also, into microtransactions within Apps and games. Another improvement on the M-PESA platform is the ability for users to prevent fraud through an avenue that allows them to access an overdraft on their accounts. So, they can pay for goods and services with the overdraft and then, will be debited later.
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