The company said that 20 million Safaricom customers and seven million Vodacom Tanzania M-Pesa will be able to make mobile transactions between each other via a combined network of 180,000 agents.
“With a substantial unbanked population transacting mainly in cash, the Tanzania-Kenya corridor represents a significant opportunity for M-Pesa to give people and companies an accessible, low-cost alternative to traditional international remittances,” said Michael Joseph, Vodafone’s director of Mobile Money.
The announcement comes two months after Safaricom was awarded a cash remittance licence which enables the company to transfer money out of the country. Vodafone is Safaricom’s largest shareholder.
In 2012, formal remittance between Tanzania and Kenya were approximately $133 million, according to the World Bank.
