Three cellcos in Tanzania facilitate cross-network mobile money

Three of Tanzania’s four mobile networks, Tigo, Airtel and Zantel have announced Africa’s first agreement to allow their customers in the country to send money to each other whether using Tigo Pesa, Airtel Money or EzyPesa on their mobile handsets.

The service is expected to begin this month.

This is the first agreement in Africa to adopt interoperable mobile money services, whereby one network allows another network’s customers to send money to its clients.

With this agreement, the potential number of customers able to send money by mobile to each other in Tanzania, regardless of network, will increase to over sixteen million.

Vodacom Tanzania is expected to conclude a similar agreement.

Tigo has over 6.2 million customers in Tanzania overall and 3.4 million users of its Tigo Pesa mobile money service.

In February 2014, Millicom launched a cross-border mobile money service with currency conversion between Tanzania and Rwanda.