L-R: CEO MFS Africa, Patrick Gutman; Group Deputy Managing Director, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, Muyiwa Akinyemi; Founder and CEO MFS Africa, Dare Okoudjou; Chief of Staff, MFS Africa, Meghan Taylor; and Group General Manager – Retail, Digital & Transaction Banking, UBA Plc, Sampson Aneke during the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, (MoU) heralding the start of a partnership between UBA Plc and MFS Africa 

Africa’s Global Bank, the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc and MFS Africa, Africa’s largest digital payments hub, have announced a partnership that will see both institutions offer innovative and timely solutions to a wide range of customers, especially in the area of Remittances, Electronic Money Services, SME Payments, as well as integration to businesses for cross border payments.

These services are expected to cover the 20 African countries UBA operates in, which include; Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Republic of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Guinea, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Mali and Senegal.

Both organisations signed an MoU at the UBA Head Office in Lagos on Tuesday, heralding the start of a partnership that will be pivotal in leveraging MFS Africa’s digital payment hub that connects over  400 million mobile money users to a wide range of partners including Mobile Money Operators, Money Transfer Organisations, Fintechs, Enterprise Merchants, and others, to drive distribution of financial services at scale.

UBA’s Group Deputy Managing Director, Muyiwa Akinyemi, who spoke during the signing ceremony, expressed his excitement at the plethora of offerings that UBA customers will enjoy from the partnership. 

“We are very pleased to be partnering with MFS Africa in this venture that will see us offering seamless digital solutions to most of the financial challenges of our customers.  UBA is ready and with the value that MFS Africa is known for we are indeed set to dominate the entire banking space in Africa,” Akinyemi said.

He explained that the partnership will help to boost an array of services which will include a centralised payment hub that enables cross-border payments across multiple rails through a single integration; Inbound and Outbound cross border remittances; SME Payments Digitisation; Domestic and Cross Border Corporate Disbursements; Remittance Africa China Corridor; Bin Sponsorship and Web Acquiring. 

Speaking on behalf of MFS Africa, Dare Okoudjou, the founder and CEO, said, “As the payments landscape in Africa continues to evolve, we believe that Fintechs and banks need to have a deeper collaboration in expanding opportunities that will help ease remittance, payments, disbursements and collections for businesses and their consumers across all sectors of the economy in Africa. 

“This is why we are delighted to welcome UBA as our new pan-African banking partner. We are aware of the strengths and capabilities of UBA which is why we will be working together towards expanding access to more possibilities for millions of African consumers and businesses across the 20 countries they are present in Africa,” Dare said.

UBA is a leading pan-African financial institution, offering banking services to more than thirty-seven million customers across 1,000 business offices and customer touch points in 20 African countries.

With presence in New York, London and Paris and now the UAE, UBA is connecting people and businesses across Africa through retail, commercial and corporate banking, innovative cross-border payments and remittances, trade finance and ancillary banking services. 

MFS Africa connects over 400 million mobile wallets to each other, and to the world in a mission to make African payments as simple as making a phone call In addition to mobile remittance services, the MFS Africa API enables merchant payment, bulk payment, bank-to-wallet transfers, and an array of other cross border digital payments services. The institution recently acquired Capricorn Digital, one the foremost Agent Banking providers, which boasts of over 150 000 agents across all regions in Nigeria.