TTCL, Tigo Tanzania allow cross-network mobile money transfer
Thursday March 22 2018
Tanzania Telecommunication Company Ltd offices. TTCL has signed a mobile money interoperability partnership with Tigo Tanzania. PHOTO FILE | NMG
Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation Limited (TTCL), a state-owned firm, hopes to catch up with other telcos in the country offering mobile money transfer services.
TTCL has entered into a partnership with Swedish Millicom, owners of Tigo Tanzania, that will allow users to send and receive money across the two networks in real time.
“We’re very much happy to sign this partnership agreement which is going to benefit to our customers. We aim to transform the daily financial needs of our people to be cashless and be the enabler of all digital financial transactions performed in Tanzania,” said Moses Alphonce, the TTCL Head of Mobile Financial Services.
TTCL Pesa entered the mobile money market last year and has a paltry 3,135 subscribers from its 429,735 users.
Others in the market are Vodacom's M-Pesa, with the largest share, Tigo Pesa, Airtel Money, Halotel's Halo Pesa, and Zantel's EzyPesa.
According to 2017 data from the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA), M-Pesa holds a 37 per cent market share of the 21.9 million mobile money users in the country. Tigo follows with 31 per cent, Airtel 27 per cent, Halo 4 per cent and EzyPesa 1 per cent.
The state-run TTCL lags behind in the industry that has over 40 million mobile phone subscribers.
“Interoperability is always a catalyst for growth in the mobile money sector,” said Hussein Sayed, Tigo's chief officer for Financial Services.