Safaricom, Western Union Partner In Global Money Transfer

Mobile service provider Safaricom has entered into an agreement with American financial services, Western Union to offer its customers global mobile money services that will see them send money for pick up at more than 500,000 Western Union agent locations across the world.

The new partnership is expected to increase the number of transactions made from the already existing customers who can make and receive payments from PayPal customers.

‘’We are sure it’s going to contribute in unlocking a lot of growth. If you look at our half-year results, you saw that a lot of growth that we are having as a company is coming from Mpesa, now contributing 30 per cent of our revenue.’’ Safaricoms’s newly appointed Chief Customer Officer Sylvia Mulinge said.

Adding that the company is engaging the relevant regulators to be able to open up the maximum amount that customers can send and receive,’’ The demand is definitely there, Kenyans do a lot of transactions as part of their everyday enterprise and there for the moment you increase the limits they’ll be able to use this platform.’’

According to western Union Regional Vice-President-Southern, East & Anglophone West Africa Richard Malcolm, western union is rolling out digital services to tap up into the 75-80 per cent digital transactions which are processed on the mobile devices globally.

Adding that in this partnership, western Union will play a supporting role hence only fee charged will be an Mpesa fee but Safaricom will be charged an undisclosed amount in processor fee.