Kenya’s biggest mobile money platform is working to simplify sending money home for Kenyans abroad. M-Pesa is working on a feature to enable direct global remittance to its customers. The feature will be part of M-Pesa Global. It will offer a single point of integration to multiple markets.
A Safaricom staff told Techweez, “The goal is to enable partners to conveniently and directly link to M-PESA through a single API”.
The intergrated platform will prevent the need for M-pesa remittance partners to go through other third parties to end up on M-Pesa.
The mobile money remittance market in Africa is a huge fintech scene with many players. A GSMA study found that countries with mobile money remittance services have a GDP that was nearly 1.5% higher than it would have been without mobile money. It is no doubt that M-Pesa is angling for a bigger piece of the pie.
Speaking at the “Future of payments in East Africa”, a Paymentology roadshow held in Nairobi, Reuben Simiyu, Manager – Global Acceptance at M-PESA Africa, stated this move is part of the efforts to serve the 60 million Kenyan customers better.
Read: Onafriq and M-PESA Join Forces to Streamline Ethiopian Remittances
M-Pesa, Visa and Paymentology Partnership
At the Paymentology roadshow, Simiyu described the journey of M-PESA Africa and its purpose to continuously drive financial inclusion across. He revealed that the launch of M-Pesa Virtual Visa card, a virtual card that enables M-Pesa users to make payments to international online sites for goods and services, was pushed by global merchants’ sites insistence on card services.
It is this insistence and Kenyans need to pay for international services like Spotify that pushed the partnership between M-Pesa (the mobile wallet) and Visa . This integration is enabled by Paymentology, a company that offers card payments processing services.
Since launch in 2021 in Tanzania and 2022 in Kenya, M-Pesa Global has facilitated for payments totaling USD 52 million in Tanzania and USD 55 million in Kenya.
**This Article has a Correction from previous claim of eliminating need for 3rd parties
