Ecobank, the Pan African bank

MFS Africa Appointed as Digital Payment Partner for Ecobank

Ecobank, the Pan-African bank, announced today the appointment of MFS Africa as its digital payment partner, enabling cross-platform payment services for Ecobank account holders. The partnership allows Ecobank customers to send and receive money to and from over 170 million mobile money users through an integration with MFS Africa that covers all Telcos in the MFS Africa Hub. The service supports both domestic and cross-border intra-Africa transfers, leveraging Rapidtransfer, a proprietary instant remittance product of Ecobank.

Expanding Financial Reach Across Africa

Ecobank operates in 33 African countries, serving over twenty million customers. In line with the bank’s digital strategy, the partnership with MFS Africa Hub creates the first major initiative of interoperability between bank accounts and mobile money customers. This brings greater value for mobile money customers as they can now send money directly to any bank account in Ecobank without infrastructural hindrances; conversely, Ecobank customers can do the same.

MFS Africa: The Largest Mobile Payments Hub in Sub-Saharan Africa

MFS Africa operates the largest mobile payments hub network in sub-Saharan Africa, connecting over 170 million mobile wallets, and a wide network of money transfer operators and merchants. Through partnerships with mobile network operators including MTN, Orange, Airtel, Moov, Econet, Tigo, Safaricom, and Vodafone, MFS Africa allows mobile financial services to scale across borders, currencies, and networks with a Pan-African bank like Ecobank.

Building Pan-African Linkages Between Mobile Money and Banking

“The partnership between Ecobank and MFS Africa represents a significant step in building pan-African linkages between mobile money services and traditional banking channels,” says Ade Ayeyemi, CEO of Ecobank Group.

“Typically, banks and other financial service providers seeking to integrate with mobile wallet systems are confined to domestic markets, with almost no interoperability among networks in a single country, let alone across borders. This severely inhibits utility, efficiency, and customer experience. The collaboration between Ecobank Banking Group and MFS Africa eliminates this hurdle and accelerates the ecosystem, driving financial inclusion and offering a greater range of options to Africans,” Ayeyemi adds.

Interoperability: A Win-Win Approach

While conventional wisdom pits banks and mobile money services against each other as incumbents threatened by disruptors, the reality is quite different. Interoperable cross-platform services expand the pie of financial possibilities, bringing more choice and value to consumers using bank accounts or mobile wallets, and leveraging the strengths of both types of players.

The Future of Financial Inclusion in Africa

Speaking on the partnership, Dare Okoudjou, founder and CEO of MFS Africa, says that the region’s financial inclusion landscape offers exciting opportunities for innovation and collaboration between banks, other financial institutions, mobile money operators, and fintech.

“We’re proud to offer seamless payments across networks and borders into the next frontier of financial inclusion – mobile wallets – to Ecobank customers. Historically, the relationship between banks and fintech has been competitive, but Ecobank has demonstrated a win-win approach to partnership that takes care of every stakeholder in the value chain. Ecobank is the first financial institution that shares the MFS Africa vision to make financial services more seamless, convenient, and interoperable across Africa,” says Okoudjou.

About Ecobank Group

Incorporated in Lomé, Togo in 1988, Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (‘ETI’) is the parent company of the leading independent pan-African banking group, Ecobank. It currently has a presence in 36 African countries, including Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Democratic Republic), Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The Group employs 15,930 people in 40 different countries in over 940 branches and offices. Ecobank is a full-service bank providing wholesale, retail, investment, and transaction banking services and products to governments, financial institutions, multinationals, international organisations, medium, small, and micro businesses, and individuals. Additional information on Ecobank can be found at www.ecobank.com.