MFS Africa has partnered with Xoom, a PayPal service, to offer secure and convenient mobile money transfers across six African countries. MFS Africa will connect Xoom to its digital payments hub, allowing customers in the UK, Europe and North America to make money transfers to Cameroon, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe .
The partnership will enable Xoom to strengthen its presence in Africa. This will be achieved by providing transfers to mobile money wallets through MFS Africa’s digitals payments hub. The hub connects more than 200 million mobile wallets in Africa through a single API.
It will also create new possibilities for remittances in sub-Saharan Africa which is estimated to be worth $51 billion in 2020, according to the World Bank. It is still the most expensive region in the world to send money to, with an average cost of 9.3 percent.
Dare Okoudjou, founder and CEO of MFS Africa, said in a statement, “Xoom – and their parent company PayPal – are pioneers in digital-first payments, and we are excited to partner with Xoom to further connect our network to the wider world. Diaspora remittances have always been critical for the livelihood of hundreds of millions of Africans and leveraging digital channels to deliver those remittances has always been an important part of our mission. But in a time of global crisis, when brick-and-mortar money transfer stores are not open, connecting digital payments players in the diaspora to the largest network of mobile wallets in Africa doesn’t just make good business sense – it’s the right thing to do from a public health and human welfare perspective, too.”