The United bank for Africa (UBA) and MFS Africa, a leading digital payments gateway have both entered into a collaboration that will enhance their operations in the area of remittances, electronic money services, SME payments, as well as integration to businesses for cross-border payments.
The services will be rolled out in the 20 countries in which UBA operates. The countries include Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Republic of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Guinea, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Mali, and Senegal.
The partnership was sealed in Lagos on Tuesday after both organisations signed an MoU. The partnership will leverage MFS Africa’s digital payment hub that connects over 400 million mobile money users to a wide range of partners including Mobile Money Operators, Money Transfer Organisations, Fintechs, Enterprise Merchants, and others, to drive the distribution of financial services at scale.
Muyiwa Akinyemi, UBA’s group deputy managing director said, “We are very pleased to be partnering with MFS Africa in this venture that will see us offering seamless digital solutions to most of the financial challenges of our customers. UBA is ready and with the value that MFS Africa is known for we are indeed set to dominate the entire banking space in Africa,” Akinyemi said.
Akinyemi also made it clear that the partnership will enhance a variety of services like a centralised payment hub that enables cross-border payments across multiple rails through a single integration; inbound and outbound cross-border remittances; SME payments digitisation; domestic and cross-border corporate disbursements; remittance Africa China corridor; bin sponsorship and web acquiring.
Dare Okoudjou, founder/CEO MFS of Africa, said, “As the payments landscape in Africa continues to evolve, we believe that Fintechs and banks need to have a deeper collaboration in expanding opportunities that will help ease remittance, payments, disbursements and collections for businesses and their consumers across all sectors of the economy in Africa.
“This is why we are delighted to welcome UBA as our new pan-African banking partner. We are aware of the strengths and capabilities of UBA which is why we will be working together towards expanding access to more possibilities for millions of African consumers and businesses across the 20 countries they are present in Africa,” Dare said.
