- TerraPay to work alongside UBA Group, which calls itself “Africa’s global bank”, to deliver new service to 20 countries
- Service is already live in five countries, and will expand to 15 more soon
- "We are delighted to bring the convenience of instant cross border money transfer to any UBA account in 20 countries”, said a TerraPay spokesperson
An international money transfer firm based in London is set to expand into Africa following a partnership announcement.
TerraPay said that it would work alongside UBA Group, which is based in Nigeria, to deliver the new real-time online money transfer platform.
The agreement between the two firms means that 20 countries in Africa will receive the service.
At the moment, five countries can already access the service, which aims to increase the convenience available to customers looking to place remittances.
Cameroon and Ghana are two of the countries in which the service is already active, while, Sierra Leone, Cote d'ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Burkina Faso are involved too.
A further fifteen nations in which the UBA Group operates will soon be able to access it.
These include Senegal, Uganda, Chad, Kenya, Zambia and many more.
Customers will need to have a UBA account in order for the money transfer to take place.
In a statement, Ambar Sir – who is TerraPay’s founder and CEO – said that the new agreement would play “a pivotal role” in the remittance world.
"This partnership with UBA Group will play a pivotal role in cross border remittances across Africa, Americas and Europe", Sur said.
"We are delighted to bring the convenience of instant cross border money transfer to any UBA account in 20 countries.”
Other well-known remittance destinations are included on the longer list, including some countries which are known as relatively strong economic performers on the African continent – such as Tanzania.
Gabon, Benin and Mozambique are also included.
For UBA Group, Sampson Aneke – who is the group head for transaction and electronic banking – said that the move represented a “huge step” in opening up access to financial services.
"As Africa's global bank, we are delighted to open up a fresh opportunity for real-time money transfer with TerraPay", he said.
"This is another huge step in improving access to financial services for our customers across the globe.”
TerraPay is a mobile-based service, and claims to work across “diverse payment instruments, platforms and regions”.
It describes itself as “the world’s first mobile payments switch- a B2B transaction processing, clearing and settlement service for mobile wallets”.
“Our best-in-class technology serves as the interoperability engine that enables our partner’s customers to send and receive real-time transactions across diverse payment instruments, platforms and regions”, it added.
It operates in a range of countries and is part of the Mahindra Group.
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