Afrimoney strikes deal with major bank in The Gambia

Partnership between Afrimoney and Access Bank Gambia enables seamless transfers between digital wallets and bank accounts

Image: Afrimoney and Access Bank executives at the launch of the product

Africell’s mobile money platform, Afrimoney, is now even more powerful thanks to an exciting partnership with Access Bank in The Gambia.

Afrimoney customers in The Gambia can transfer funds quickly, safely and easily between their mobile money wallets and their Access Bank accounts. The service is open to ordinary Afrimoney subscribers and merchants that use Afrimoney to collect payments. The tie-up means that more individuals and businesses can reap the rewards of mobile money. In addition to offering an innovative value-added service to Afrimoney subscribers, the initiative benefits Access Bank by exposing it to a new demographic of potential customers.

The product is customer-initiated which means that it only kicks in if a customer chooses. However, those who do take advantage of it will benefit from enhanced connectivity between their digital money and physical cash, including the ability to transfer funds from their Access Bank account to their Afrimoney wallet and then make further payments with mobile money. Customers will also have access to a suite of additional Access Bank Services (including loans, saving and insurance) made available for the very first time to Afrimoney users.

Mobile money is a high-impact industry in Africa where many people either do not have bank accounts or are “under-banked” (meaning that they use bank accounts only for limited functions, such as to deposit and withdraw cash). The long-term ambition of the mobile money industry is to fill this gap by extending flexible financial tools to people through their mobile phones. With mobile money, a person can deposit and receive funds, and make a variety of other forms of transfer and payment, with nothing more than a 2G mobile connection.

“Afrimoney’s partnership with Access Bank is a good example of a mobile money success story”, says Kate Roze, Director of Afrimoney in The Gambia. “We want Afrimoney to serve as an entry point into the formal financial ecosystem. We are achieving this by removing barriers between our system and that of Access Bank, with the objective of enabling and incentivising customers to adopt both digital wallets and traditional bank accounts”. 

Africell is a pan-African mobile network provider. Afrimoney, the company’s mobile money platform, also operates in Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola. Afrimoney’s potential to transform Africa’s digital financial landscape was recently recognised by USAID, the development arm of the US government, which agreed to contribute almost $5 million to accelerate Afrimoney’s expansion in Angola.