September 9, 2015 Port-Louis – MFS Africa, the Pan-African fintech company and largest aggregator of mobile wallets in Africa, announced today that its first East African xP2P corridor has now opened between MTN Uganda and MTN Rwanda. MTN Mobile Money users in Rwanda are now able to send money to Uganda seamlessly and affordably through the MFS Africa Hub. The Hub connects mobile wallet customers across networks and countries in sub-Saharan Africa, enabling convenient and affordable mobile-to-mobile international money transfer (“xP2P”).
The World Bank estimates that over $160 million is sent from Rwanda to Uganda each year in remittances, through formal and informal channels. Formal channels such as banks and traditional money transfer companies can take days and charge exorbitant fees, while informal money traders and couriers carry high levels of risk and uncertainty. As such, current costs of transfers to Africa average 12%, and transfers between African countries cost on average 20% – compared to a global average of 8%. In contrast, transfers through mobile money are instantaneous, secure, traceable, and dramatically cheaper.
“The MFS Africa Hub is bringing inter-operability to mobile money platforms – across borders as well as across networks. We’re excited to take this step with MFS Africa towards regional integration,” said Serigne Ndoum, Head of Mobile Financial Services at MTN Group.
“We are excited to extend our xP2P service to East Africa with our long standing Partners MTN Rwanda and MTN Uganda,” said Dare Okoudjou, founder and CEO of MFS Africa. “We look forward to opening up more xP2P corridors in the region to enable more people and business to send money across boarders at a fraction of current costs; we remain confident that we will achieve our of reducing intra-African remittances costs to a single-digit rate by the end of the decade.”
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