Western Union has formed a partnership with Zimbabwe’s largest mobile-phone carrier as the global money-transfer company seeks to handle more of the funds sent home by the southern African country’s citizens overseas.
Since Thursday, customers of Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Ltd. have been able to do transfers with Douglas County-based Western Union on their mobile phones.
“The intention here is to expand our footprint, because we now have a virtual location, we have 230 bricks-and-mortar locations, and now we have 3 million handsets,” said Richard Malcolm, Western Union’s regional vice president for southern and eastern Africa.
The estimated 3 million Zimbabweans who live outside the country sent $1.8 billion home last year, according to the central bank. Western Union is adding to partnerships it has in Zimbabwe with CABS, a unit of Old Mutual, Fredex Express, Post Office Savings Bank, Easy Link, Zimpost and Steward Bank.
Econet has 9 million registered customers, while money-transfer unit Ecocash, founded in 2011, has 4 million subscribers and a network of 15,000 agents. In the nine months to September, Ecocash processed $2.4 billion of transactions. Competitor Telecel processed $17 million of business and state-owned Net One $1.3 million, according to figures from the central bank.
