Global fintech infrastructure platform, Nium, announced on Tuesday its clients are now able to send funds to their business partners located in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania. Customers of Nium are also able to extend this service to their own consumers.
“Traditionally, businesses, fintechs and even consumers looking to send cross-border payments into Africa encountered long transfer times, multiple intermediaries and eventually higher transaction costs and other inefficiencies. Nium’s local partnerships in the four key African markets will provide a more streamlined, convenient, and cost-efficient solution for remitting payments into these countries.”
Nium’s money transfer capabilities in Africa will allow clients:
- The ability to send money to Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and Tanzania via bank transfers (same day or next day delivery[1]) and mobile money wallets in real-time
- Access to more than 14 mobile money wallets in these countries, including M-Pesa, Airtel, MTN, Vodacom
- Support for remitting funds to over 30 banks in each country and to more than 1000 bank branches as part of the supporting banks network
(Kenya: 41 banks, 87 branches; South Africa: 41 banks, 58 branches; Ghana: 27 banks, 1000+ branches; Tanzania: 37 banks, 600+ branches)
Speaking about the expansion, Clara Wanjiku Odero, Vice President of Partnerships and Growth, Middle East and Africa at Nium, stated:
“While much progress has been made to revamp the consumer remittance scene in Africa, more needs to be done to improve the experience of business payments into Africa. With Nium now supporting both bank transfers and mobile money wallet payments into Africa, global businesses can now expect a much smoother, faster and safer transaction experience when making payments to partners, individuals or vendors within the continent.”
Nium added that all funds transferred into the four countries can be initiated in any of the 40+ source currencies currently offered through Nium’s Send service and recipients will receive the payout in their local currency (KES, ZAR, GH₵, TSH).
Founded in 2015, Nium (originally InstaReM) was launched to improve the cross-border payments experience for consumers in the APAC region. It has since expanded and scaled its offerings to meet the needs of SMEs, financial institutions, enterprises, and other payment service providers. Nium added it currently operates its Send, Spend and Receive business in over 100 countries, 65 in real-time.