Ecobank signs up fintech MFS Africa to ease mobile transfers

December 14, 2018 in Business, Companies, Finance, Financial Services by Editor

December 14, 2018—Ecobank, the Togo-based multinational with operations across Africa, has announced that customers can now send and receive money to and from over 170 million mobile money users through an integration with MFS Africa that covers all telcos in the MFS Africa Hub.

Ade Ayeyemi, CEO of Ecobank Group said this week, “The partnership between Ecobank and MFS Africa represents a significant step in building pan-African linkages between mobile money services and traditional banking channels.”

MFS Africa is a leading pan-African fintech company, operating the largest digital payments hub on the continent involving 170 million mobile wallets.  It connects mobile money systems to each other and to money transfer organizations, banks and other financial institutions, enabling money remittances to and from mobile money accounts.

Dare Okoudjou, the founder and CEO of MFS Africa said, “We’re proud to offer seamless payments across networks and borders into the next frontier of financial inclusion – mobile wallets – to Ecobank customers.

Ecobank operates in 33 African countries, serving over twenty million customers. In line with the bank’s digital strategy, the partnership with MFS Africa Hub creates the first major initiative of interoperability between bank account and mobile money customers.

Okoudjou said, “Historically, the relationship between banks and fintech has been competitive but Ecobank has demonstrated a win-win approach to partnership that takes care of every stakeholder in the value chain. Ecobank is the first financial institution that shares the MFS Africa vision to make financial services more seamless, convenient, and interoperable across Africa.”

Through partnerships with mobile network operators including MTN, Orange, Airtel, Moov, Econet, Tigo, Safaricom and Vodafone, MFS Africa allows mobile financial services to scale across borders, currencies and networks with a Pan African Bank like Ecobank.

Ayeyemi said, “Typically, banks and other financial service providers seeking to integrate to mobile wallet systems are confined to domestic markets with almost no interoperability among networks in a single country, let alone across borders, severely inhibiting utility, efficiency, and customer experience. The collaboration between Ecobank Banking Group and MFS Africa eliminates this hurdle and accelerates the ecosystem, driving financial inclusion and offering a greater range of options to Africans”