Xoom, PayPal’s money transfer service, announced that its customers can now send money transfers directly to mobile wallets in Tanzania and other key markets across Africa.
The new service expands the company’s offering to send money to mobile wallets in Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe—with plans to include more markets in 2021.
“Sending money to Africa through traditional channels has always been expensive. We wanted to help bring down the cost and speed up the process to boost financial inclusion,” said Julian King, Vice President and General Manager of Xoom.
“There is nowhere else in the world that moves more money on mobile phones than Sub-Saharan Africa. While there are only five bank branches per 100,000 people as of 2019, there are 1.04 billion registered mobile money accounts,” King added.
The cost of sending money through traditional channels to Africa is one of the most expensive in the world. According to the World Bank, the cost of sending USD 200 to the Sub-Saharan African region averaged 9% in 2018, and in the southern African subregion the average cost was 18.7%, almost three times higher than the global average.
Tanzania’s mobile money penetration reached 53% with 29.7 million mobile money subscriptions in 2020, compared to 21 million in 2018, with an increase of 41%. In June 2020, 272,339,270 mobile money transactions took place, for a total value of USD 4.6 billion. There are six mobile operators offering mobile money services in Tanzania: Vodacom with M-Pesa (39%), Tigo with Tigo Pesa (30%), Airtel with Airtel Money (20%), Halotel with Halopesa (7%), TTCL (3%), and Zantel with Ezy Pesa (1%).
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