Airtel ties up with Tigo, Zantel for mobile money transfer
The service is expected to begin this month, the company said
New Delhi: Bharti Airtel Ltd on Thursday announced a tie-up with African telecom operators MIC Tanzania Ltd (Tigo) and Zanzibar Telecom Ltd (Zantel) to provide a cross-network mobile-money transfer service to customers in Tanzania.
The service is expected to begin this month, Airtel said in a statement. Customers of the three firms will be able to send money by mobile to each other by either using Airtel Money, Tigo Pesa or EzyPesa.
“This is a tremendous evolution towards ensuring the mobile commerce inclusion sought by many Tanzanians, especially taking into account Airtel’s broad reach across the country," Airtel Tanzania managing director Sunil Colaso said.
Airtel said this was the first cross-network e-money transfer service in Africa, and that such inter-operability agreements were common in the early days of the mobile industry for voice calls and SMS text messaging.
“Just as we cooperate with our competitors on voice calls and text to help our customers, so we hope to be able to do the same with mobile money and help make Tanzania a global pioneer in digital financial inclusion," Tigo general manager for Tanzania Diego Gutierrez said.
Zantel managing director Pratap Ghose said the company would work with the industry and regulatory bodies to ensure it delivers “best in class" service to its customers.
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