Customers of Airtel’s mobile money platform Airtel Money in Burkina Faso will now be able to send money to friends and family or business partners on the Orange network in neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire and vice versa, following a new collaboration between the two telecoms.
This new move by the two provides the people of Burkina Faso with an opportunity to enjoy benefits of using their mobile phones to send money to another country, a provision they did not have before as there are no mobile money platforms offering the service outside their borders.
Mobile network operators are now introducing cross-border mobile money services, with Safaricom joining the party earlier this week as it partnered Vodacom Tanzania to allow M-Pesa customers to send money directly between the two countries while Tigo also managed a similar partnership to allow for cross-network money transfers.
Now Airtel and Orange have joined the party, with the service being an addition to the existing Orange Money International Transfer (2013) offer that currently allows customers in Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and Mali to carry out mobile money transfers and with further plans to extend the service to other countries and serve more users.
“Following the successful launch of Orange Money International Transfer between Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Mali, we want to develop new ways to allow our customers to send and receive money between countries in the West African Economic and Monetary Union,” said Thierry Millet, Senior VP Mobile Financial Services and NFC at Orange.
“We are very happy to launch this service between Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso, which meets one of the region’s biggest needs.”
Through the new service, customers will send money across the two networks by visiting their mobile money wallets for either Orange or Airtel and enter the number for the person they want to send money to, enter the amount to be sent followed by their wallet PINs. The money is transferred directly to the user’s account and they can use it to carry out transactions.
