Western Union Co. is expanding an initiative to enable Kenyan migrants to send funds to recipients in their home country who subscribe to Safaricon’s M-Pesa mobile wallet, the companies announced March 31.
M-Pesa is a branchless mobile-banking service that enables consumers to deposit and withdraw funds from a network that includes airtime resellers and retail outlets that serve as banking agents. The service enables users to transfer funds to other users and nonusers, pay bills and purchase airtime.
Some 13.5 million consumers have signed up to use the service since it launched in 2007.
Western Union in 2009 launched the service for Kenyan migrants in the United Kingdom. The Englewood, Colo.-based company now has expanded the service to more than 80,000 Western Union agent locations in 45 countries and territories.
“We focused on expanding this service to countries that have significant” numbers of Kenyan migrants, Rebecca Loevenguth, director of strategic alliances for Western Union’s electronic channels, tells PaymentsSource. Those countries include Canada, Italy and the United States.
Western Union plans to expand the service to its mobile-wallet provider partners in such countries as the Philippines, Loevenguth adds.
Senders need the recipient’s mobile number for the agent to initiate the transfer. Funds are delivered to the mobile wallet in minutes, according to a Western Union press release. Transfer fees vary according to the amount sent.
“We’ve found the amount sent [to a mobile wallet] is lower than a regular transaction, but the frequency per month is significantly higher,” Loevenguth says.
Kenyans increasingly are sending funds back to their home country, according to government figures. Migrants sent some $642 million in funds back to Kenaya in 2010, according to stats from the Central Bank of Kenya. That figure was up 5.4% from $609 million in 2009.
Such figures likely motivated Western Union to expand the service beyond the United Kingdom. “We looked to include more countries from almost the beginning,” Loevenguth says. “[The expansion] provides maximum coverage and maximum options for the customer.”
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