Mobile Finance

Liberian operator Lonestar Cell MTN has announced two initiatives to make mobile payment and social media access easier for its customers.

Mobile banking has been one of the great success stories in emerging markets - particularly within Africa - and in the wake of Covid-19, many in the financial sector are calling for further digitalisation to ensure resilience and growth.

Nigerian financial services firm Carbon is enabling its customers to access its offering from within whichever app they are using.

A fascinating side effect of the coronavirus-led lockdowns in multiple countries is their impact on payment methods – and notably payment methods in India, where a recent report says, digital payments are surging.

Veon’s JazzCash has partnered with Mastercard to strengthen the payments ecosystem for merchants and customers in Pakistan.

There’s a new player in the mobile money remittance space as m-Gurush, South Sudan’s first mobile money service, launches international remittance services on its Mobile Money platform.

Another tie-up between a mobile operator – in this case Safaricom – and a major digital payments company may not be much of a surprise, but it certainly confirms a growing interest from major names across the cashless payment sector in Africa’s mobile money market.

Tigo Tanzania has enabled interoperability between mobile wallet services, allowing customers to send and receive funds from M-Pesa in Kenya, MTN in Uganda and Rwanda, and Airtel in Rwanda.

Zimbabwe’s second-biggest operator, the state-owned service provider NetOne, is expecting a rise in subscriber numbers after the announcement of a recent government initiative.

Free, Senegal’s second-largest mobile network operator, has deployed mobiquity Money from Indian mobility solutions provider Comviva to enhance its mobile money service Free Money.

eWallet – a new service from telecoms giant Etisalat and Dubai-based full-service bank Noor Bank – has been launched in the UAE, promising international remittance services from the UAE to 200 countries.

A flurry of activity in Kenya has seen banks and operators make cashless payments easier.

Orange Money is launching in Morocco.

The government of Côte d'Ivoire is seeking to increase the usage of mobile banking in the country by allowing interoperability between different digital financial services.

Cameroon has ordered MTN and Orange to implement ID checks for all parties involved in mobile money transactions, after it emerged that ransom payments had been made using their transfer services.

Myanmar’s state-owned MPT has launched its mobile money platform after getting the green light from the country’s central bank in October last year.

Ghanaian bank GCB has stated that it will launch its G-Money mobile money platform on 30^th January.

Orange Jordan, a provider of telecommunications services in Jordan, officially launched its mobile e-wallet service, Orange Money, at a special event this week.

MTN has announced that its mobile money service, MoMo, already available in a number of African countries, will go live in South Africa in January 2020.

Payments solutions providers FSS (Financial Software and Systems and Arab Financial Services (AFS) have entered into an agreement to bring omni-channel payment acceptance solutions to banks in the region.

Telecoms giant Airtel Africa and pan-African banking group Ecobank Transnational Incorporated have signed a partnership that could enhance mobile commerce for their customers.

Myanmar’s state-run operator MPT has been granted a mobile financial services licence by the country’s central bank after a lengthy approval process.