- The London- and Dubai-based Xpress Money, an international transfer firm with 200,000 agent locations across 165 countries, has partnered with Chinese electronics giant Huawei to extend its distribution network.
- The target is Africa: Huawei’s mobile money services have widespread support in developing markets, particularly in Africa.
Huawei specialises in reaching the unbanked. As a spokesperson for Huawei points out: “Globally, 58% of people transfer money by giving cash in person, 24% transfer money through the post office, and only 18% transfer money through banks. Two billion, mostly poor, adults don’t have any bank accounts. However, 1.6 billion of these people do have mobile phones. This presents a huge opportunity.”
Huawei has made good use of this opportunity, working currently with 100 million mobile money markets worldwide, providing basic banking services. The Huawei technology doesn’t just work on high-tech smartphones – even basic handsets can make use of it.
Xpress Money is a remittance specialist. It makes rapid transfers at low cost among its agent network and to banks. Huawei’s mobile money accounts will now be able to use Xpress Money to make payments, and to provide access to a range of financial services.
Africa is a very important market for Xpress, because most of the financial services that exist are done via mobile money platforms.
“For those that have limited access to formal banking services, mobile money is a critical technology. There are over 500 million mobile money accounts currently in use, and with Huawei servicing over 100 million of these, we’re confident this collaboration will improve the state of financial services for Africa’s unbanked,” said Sudhesh Giriyan, chief operating officer of Xpress Money.
