Dar es Salaam, Tanzania … Pesapal, a leader in building payments and business tools for Africa, has partnered with Tigo Tanzania to drive growth in digital financial services and advance financial inclusion in Tanzania.
Under the arrangement, Tigo will integrate its mobile money payments into the Pesapal Point-of-Sale machines (Sabi POS), meaning merchants with our POS machines will now accept Tigo Pesa, besides Visa and Mastercard payments.
Given Tanzania’s high mobile money account usage rate, supporting our customers with secure and convenient mobile money payment methods makes sense. Our partnership will help increase financial inclusion in Tanzania as more people access and use digital payment services.
Commenting on the partnership, Bupe Mwakalundwa, Pesapal Tanzania Country Manager, noted that advancing financial inclusion requires broad collaboration. Our partnership with Tigo, she said, will simplify payment solutions for businesses and expand options for consumers on how they wish to make purchases.
Ms Mwakalundwa said, “For financial inclusion initiatives to be sustainable and scalable, we must develop fully functional payment ecosystems. The partnership with Tigo enables merchants and consumers in Tanzania to make e-commerce payments safely and securely on mobile.“
She added, “Through such strategic partnerships, we can achieve a digital payments economy including everyone, mitigate the costs of cash, and lay the foundation for sustainable economic growth and an inclusive society.”
According to the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), in 2021, Africa accounted for 70% of the $1 trillion mobile money transactions. It edged up 39% to $701.4 billion in 2021 from $495 billion in 2020, highlighting the future of African banking is mobile.
Less than 22% of Africans use traditional banking services, while 59% use mobile money services. Mobile money has grown from supporting Business-to-Consumer (B2C) to Business-to-Business (B2B) transactions. It corroborates the GSMA and World Bank data that Africa's e-commerce ecosystem has the potential to grow as we provide mobile payments.
