TerraPay & Safaricom’s M-PESA bring cross-border payments to Southeast Asia

By Gloria Mathias

TerraPay, a global payments infrastructure company, has partnered with Safaricom, Kenya-based telecommunications, IT, and financial services provider enabling outbound cross-border payments in Southeast Asia regions.

Through this partnership, both companies aim to work towards creating a financially inclusive payments ecosystem while fostering financial empowerment and independence for Southeast Asia regions.

Ambar Sur, Founder & CEO, TerraPay said, “We believe this breakthrough collaboration with Safaricom will usher a world of new possibilities for mobile financial service operators to directly scale globally and provide customers with the choice to send payments in a secure, transparent, and swift manner. Our partnership with Safaricom will further boost our capabilities in providing an inclusive global financial ecosystem with excellent technical solutions, cultivating an affinity by empowering Safaricom customers with fast & affordable borderless payment options and access to TerraPay’s widespread partner network of 7.5Bn+ bank accounts and 2.1Bn+ mobile wallets.”

The companies will cohesively participate by facilitating instant borderless payments, enabling financial inclusion. TerraPay’s group company Mobex (Kenya), a licensed money remittance provider, aims to enable more than 30 million M-PESA mobile wallet-holders in Kenya to send real-time payments through TerraPay’s interoperable network across all wallets in Bangladesh & Pakistan, with plans to roll out India & Nepal in a few months.

Peter Ndegwa, CEO of Safaricom noted, “We are thrilled to partner with TerraPay as it comes at a time where a growing number of customers are embracing digital payments to send money to their loved ones. TerraPay’s interoperable technology platform will enable our customers to execute secured & low-cost payments across key regions, further encouraging the adoption of digital payments in the region. We look forward to a successful collaboration.”

M-PESA, an Africa-based super app, empowers businesses and organisations to build digital mini-app storefronts that enable our customers to fulfil their daily needs, becoming a digital lifestyle enabler for enterprises.