TerraPay and Safaricom Team on Cross-Border Payments

Payments infrastructure TerraPay has launched a cross-border remittance partnership with Kenyan telecommunications firm Safaricom.

The collaboration, announced Wednesday (July 19), will operate through TerraPay’s remittance provider Mobex and let more than 30 million M-PESA mobile wallet-holders in Kenya send real-time payments to Bangladesh and Pakistan, with plans to bring the program to India and Nepal in the months ahead.

“We believe this breakthrough collaboration with Safaricom will usher in a world of new possibilities for mobile financial service operators to directly scale globally and provide customers with the choice to send payments in a secure, transparent and swift manner,” said Ambar Sur, TerraPay’s founder and CEO.

According to a TerraPay news release, M-PESA saw its global transactions grow in volume and value in the six months leading to March 2023 thanks to the rise of cross-border deals. And mobile payments in Kenya have been on the rise as the country’s central bank continues to push for the adoption of this service.

“Through this partnership, both companies aim to work towards creating a financially inclusive payments ecosystem while fostering financial empowerment and independence,” TerraPay said.

PYMBTS looked at the growth of digital payments in Africa earlier this month in a conversation with Praveksha Maharaj, director of partnerships, MEA at Entersekt.

She said most Africans have “embraced technology at scale and managed to leapfrog into the future of digital payments,” Maharaj told PYMNTS in an interview, citing mobile money operators and digital frontrunners such as Safaricom. 

As that report noted, M-Pesa is considered one of the most successful mobile payment systems in Africa — if not the world — and has, since its debut in 2007, sped up financial inclusion in the region, with more than 40 million customers and over 500,000 merchants accepting M-Pesa as a currency to pay for goods and services just in Kenya.

The remittance market overall, PYMNTS wrote in May, “is being reshaped by digital disruption.”

The World Bank estimates that remittances grew by 5% in 2022, to $626 billion. These payments are a key source of funds for workers and other people sending money back home to loved ones. 

“And since, as the World Bank also estimates, 1.4 billion adults remain unbanked, the movement of money needs to transcend what might be thought of as traditional conduits — namely, bank accounts,” PYMNTS wrote.