Safaricom’s mobile money service M-PESA and global online payments platform PayPal have announced a strategic collaboration to enable account linking and seamless fund transfers across their networks.
This collaboration, announced on Tuesday, aims to empower more than 35 million M-PESA customers and two million businesses and micro traders in Kenya to access PayPal’s global network.
By first linking their PayPal and M-PESA wallets, users can easily transfer funds from their PayPal accounts into their M-PESA wallets, and vice versa.
The solution is currently available to Safaricom M-PESA customers in Kenya, with plans to roll out the service to the other M-PESA markets in the future.
“As globalisation and digitisation continue to reshape how people and businesses connect, our partnership with PayPal is a bold step forward in enabling seamless, worry-free, safe, secure, and inclusive digital payments,’’ said Esther Waititu, chief financial services officer, Safaricom.
Waititu said the collaboration enabled M-PESA users to send and receive payments across more than 200 markets.
Otto Williams, regional head and GM: Middle East and Africa, PayPal said: “We are thrilled to enable millions of M-PESA’s customers across Africa to connect more easily to PayPal’s international customer base.”
The partnership will tap into the emergence and growing popularity of the gig economy, that has seen a rise among Africans accepting online jobs for clients across the world.
It also marks a growing trend of interoperability between fintech providers with a goal of providing customers with a digital financial ecosystem that meets their needs by combining different capabilities.
PayPal is a leading global payment processor with more than 400 million active PayPal accounts operating across 200 markets, while M-PESA is Africa’s leading mobile money service connecting more than 50 million customers across Africa, two million businesses and micro traders, with more than $1.1 billion transacted daily.
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