SimbaPay, a UK-based digital money transfer service, recently announced it is expanding its money transfer service to France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Spain. This allows customers in those countries to send money via their mobile phones to individuals’ mobile money and bank accounts in Kenya and Nigeria as well as to merchants in those two countries. SimbaPay also allows transfers from the United Kingdom. The firm is planning to add another six unspecified countries to the transfer network by the end of March 2016. While Simbapay does not charge a fee for the service, the exchange rates margins it uses affect the total cost of each transfer.
Nyasinga Onyancha, the CEO of SimbaPay, said: “We’re quite pleased to deliver this to Africans in the EU and partner banks in Africa that have been requesting we expand the service to these new territories.”
As of February 2016, the World Bank reported that Africans abroad send an estimated USD 64 billion back home annually. Further data about Simbapay are not available.
By Kevin van den Brink, Research Associate
Sources and Additional Resources
[1] SimbaPay, Press Release, “Simbapay Expands Africa Remittance Service to More EU Countries”
Do you know that MicroCapital publishes the MicroCapital Monitor newspaper each month? Find out more at https://www.microcapital.org/products-page/
Similar Posts:
- MICROFINANCE PAPER WRAP-UP: “Mobile Money, Interoperability and Financial Inclusion;” by Markus K Brunnermeier et al; published by National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
- MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: IsDB, La Poste Tunisienne to Replicate Digital Financial Services via Postal Service in Djibouti
- MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Mastercard, Vodafone Fiji Partner to Provide Debit Cards to Mobile Money Users
- MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Sama Money Acquires Première Agence de MicroFinance, Entering Microcredit Market in Mali
- MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: I&M Bank Enables Spenn Mobile App Users to Send Money to Financial Institutions Across Rwanda
