M-PESA Safaricom, known for its easy phone-based financial services, has joined forces with Onafriq, a big digital payments company in Africa. They want to make it simpler for its customers to send money to Ethiopia.
You’ve probably heard about M-PESA – it’s a way to move money using your phone, even if you don’t have a bank account. Now, with this partnership, people in Ethiopia will be able to receive money sent from anywhere in the world through M-PESA. The National Bank of Ethiopia gave the go-ahead for this in July 2023.
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Last year, the World Bank said that the amount of money sent to sub-Saharan Africa went up to $54 billion.
Ethiopia only accounted for about 5% of what was sent to all of Africa. This partnership hopes to increase that number.
Vast network
With this deal, M-PESA can now tap into Onafriq’s vast network, which has 500 million phone money accounts and 200 million bank accounts.
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Paul Kavavu, who runs M-PESA in Ethiopia, thinks this partnership will have a major impact. He says, “Our aim is to make payments easier. Ethiopia gets over five billion USD every year in money sent from abroad, and this partnership will give Ethiopians a simple and fast way to get that money.”
Nika Naghavi from Onafriq is also optimistic. She says, “We believe paying should be easy, like making a phone call. This partnership makes us the biggest payment network in Africa. We’re sure it will help Ethiopia’s economy grow.”
This move also helps Ethiopia bring in more money from other countries through formal channels. It gives people a safe and reliable way to send money using M-PESA.
