These services are expected to cover the 20 African countries UBA operates in, which include; Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Republic of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Guinea, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Mali and Senegal.
UBA’s Group Deputy Managing Director, Muyiwa Akinyemi, who spoke during the signing ceremony, expressed his excitement at the plethora of offerings that UBA customers will enjoy from the partnership.
He explained that the partnership will help to boost an array of services which will include a centralised payment hub that enables cross-border payments across multiple rails through a single integration; Inbound and Outbound cross border remittances; SME Payments Digitisation; Domestic and Cross Border Corporate Disbursements; Remittance Africa China Corridor; Bin Sponsorship and Web Acquiring.
He also congratulated MFS Africa on their recent acquisition of Capricorn Digital, one the foremost Agent Banking providers, which boasts over 150 000 agents across all regions in Nigeria and Global Technology Partners GTP a leading prepaid processor in Africa and also a key partner to UBA across 20 subsidiaries.
Speaking on behalf of MFS Africa, Dare Okoudjou, the founder and CEO, said, “As the payments landscape in Africa continues to evolve, we believe that Fintechs and banks need to have a deeper collaboration in expanding opportunities that will help ease remittance, payments, disbursements and collections for businesses and their consumers across all sectors of the economy in Africa.
“This is why we are delighted to welcome UBA as our new pan-African banking partner. We are aware of the strengths and capabilities of UBA which is why we will be working together towards expanding access to more possibilities for millions of African consumers and businesses across the 20 countries in Africa where they are present in,” Dare said.
With presence in New York, London and Paris and now the UAE, UBA is connecting people and businesses across Africa through retail, commercial and corporate banking, innovative cross-border payments and remittances, trade finance and ancillary banking services.
MFS Africa connects over 400 million mobile wallets to each other, and to the world in a mission to make African payments as simple as making a phone call. In addition to mobile remittance services, the MFS Africa API enables merchant payment, bulk payment, bank-to-wallet transfers, and an array of other cross border digital payments services.