More than 28 million M-PESA wallet holders can send money to Western Union’s worldwide pay-out network

M-PESA users now can send money globally. Source:?shutterstock.com

Safaricom, Kenya’s mobile network operator and provider of a leading mobile wallet M-PESA, and the Western Union Company have joined forces to unlock global money transfers for more than 28 million mobile wallet holders, by leveraging the Western Union global money movement platform.

In a global first, Western Union will power Safaricom to scale money transfers to more than 200 countries and territories. M-PESA Global, a newly optimized feature will allow customers to send money from their wallet for pay-out across the Western Union retail Agent network or directly via Western Union’s access to billions of accounts.

M-PESA’s mobile wallet has revolutionized financial inclusion for more than a decade by enabling millions of Kenyans to receive money from abroad, store and send money or make payments locally, and leapfrog traditional infrastructure. M-PESA wallet holders already have the option to receive money from around the world via Western Union.

Safaricom has helped millions of Kenyans establish financial services on mobile wallets within Kenya. More than 1.7 billion transactions are processed over M-PESA annually, equivalent to more than 50 percent of Kenya’s GDP value.

Customers in Kenya can access the new service by dialing *840# or by selecting “M-PESA Global” under the M-PESA menu on mySafaricomApp.

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