Towards the end of last year, Hello Group the South African financial services company behind the Hello Paisa remittance service signed a partnership with some local retailers and Telecel’s mobile money service, Telecash, opening up new remittance channels for Zimbabweans.
Despite the service’s huge potential Telecash has been rather quiet about the service without any major promotion for it – Until recently when it sent out SMSes encouraging people to receive money through Hello Paisa for collection from Telecash agents.
It looks like Telecash is finally going on the offensive and trying to trigger growth for the service.
Mobile money remittance partnerships are the latest strategy to be adopted by mobile money service providers and remittance companies to encourage the use of formalised remittances channels.
Local services like EcoCash have extensively pursued such arrangements, inking deals with players like WorldRemit, Western Union and MTN Mobile Money for cross-border wallet to wallet transfers. Telecel has also entered into the same arrangement with Mukuru.
