“Safaricom is developing a partnership with Apple Inc. to integrate MPESA and its Paypal platform to extend MPESA’s transactional reach globally” announced President Ruto yesterday. The Kenyan president was speaking at the ongoing U.S.-African Business Roundtable.
Safaricom already has M-PESA Global which was launched in 2018. The product was an expansion of the carrier’s financial services to other countries. It allows users to send and receive funds from different countries across the world through the use of a series of money remittance services such as World Remit and Western Union.
Additionally, M-Pesa already has a PayPal integration. This allows customers to deposit funds from M-PESA to the American payments system. Also, users can withdraw from PayPal to M-PESA.
As stated by the President, this partnership is a new node in M-Pesa’s global growth.
Safaricom and Apple Creating Broader Ecosystem of Services
In recent years, Apple has worked extensively to diversify its payment operations. Currently, it has a digital wallet, a credit card, a Buy Now Pay Later service, and a mobile point-of-sale (POS) solution. This also includes its partnership with the popular payment platform Paypal. Similarly, Safaricom has been enhancing its reach with more financial integrations, especially on its mySafaricom App.
As such, the partnership between the two companies is set to create a broader ecosystem of services accessible to M-Pesa users. This will further enhance M-Pesa’s quest to be a one-stop fintech solution.
However, the details of the Apple and Safaricom partnership have not been fleshed out.
