Orange launches new money transfer service in Africa

Orange telecom recently launched a new money transfer service to compete with an already competitive industry. The Orange Money International Money Transfer takes advantage of an existing lucrative market that’s hoping to secure the telecom giant’s foothold in Africa.

People from and in between Mali, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire are able to use Orange’s new money transfer service. The service allows cellphone users to directly send and receive money by simply using a general code and the recipient’s unique cell phone number.

According to Orange, more than US$260-million transfers between these three countries every year.

The Middle-East and Africa contributes to a massive 30% of Orange’s annual turnover. While there remains challenges in Africa’s unique setting, the French telecom giant isn’t planning on playing dead anytime soon.

A few weeks back, came the news of Orange’s partnership with Nashua Mobile— a South African mobile service provider. South Africa amounts for 70 percent of the telecom’s core target market.

“This is another world first for Orange in which South Africa is the first market where this is being implemented. Today’s announcement is an important step forward in our overall development strategy,” said Sébastien Crozier CEO of Orange Horizons.

“We are proud to be the first operator to offer customers the ability to make international money transfers between mobile phones in this area of Western Africa,” says Thierry Millet, Director of the strategic NFC and payment program at Orange.

Though the company should expect to see some hefty competition as it will hope to expand to other African markets in due future. There are many M-Pesa-like organizations to look out for. Most of them have already well identified target markets and local support. Orange has, however, managed to find a gap after all.

Kenya’s M-Pesa accounts for as much as 31 percent of Kenya’s GDP. EcoCash in Zimbabwe and EasyWallet in Nigeria. That’s just to name a few.