Rwandans living in Kenya and the local business community will now find it easy to send money home or to their suppliers following a partnership between MTN Rwanda Mobile Money and Safaricom’s M-Pesa money transfer services.

Commenting on the partnership, MTN Rwanda chief executive officer Gunter Engling said the service will enable convenient and affordable regional remittances.

"We are determined to strengthen the path we are taking towards financial inclusion in Rwanda, and I believe that this new partnership will be a powerful driver of economic growth,” he said.

"We are witnessing huge technological changes that have the potential to usher in a new era of financial inclusion, which we are determined to be a part of.”

The partnership launched last week will see MTN Rwanda Mobile Money and M-Pesa users send and receive money seamlessly and affordably between the two countries.

MTN Rwanda, the country’s telecommunications leader, introduced cross-border transactions between MTN Rwanda and MTN Uganda over a month ago, a move that is aimed at deepening financial inclusion and boosting regional trade.

"The launch marks a key milestone in the realisation of our partnership with Vodafone to build a scalable model that will accelerate remittance roll-out across Africa. We expect considerable volumes on this corridor (Northern Corridor) as it will leverage successes of MTN Mobile Money in Rwanda and Uganda, and M-Pesa in Kenya,” said Serigne Dioum, the MTN Group head of mobile financial services during the launch.

To send money to Uganda or Kenya, MTN Rwanda customers will be required to dial *830# from their handsets and follow prompts, where they will also view the equivalent amount to send, based on prevailing foreign exchange rates. Subscribers will dial *182# and go to ‘pending approvals’. After sending the cash, customers will then receive a confirmation message indicating that the transaction has gone through.

Betty Mwangi, the director for financial services at Safaricom, said the initiative will, not only benefit customers who may need to send money between the two countries, but will also provide a reliable and affordable way for businesses to transact, thereby helping grow the East African economy.

Denis Karera, the chairman of the East African Business Council, said the service will ease business transactions across the bloc.

"An important enabler of doing business is money, and by providing time and cost efficient ways of transferring money, this eases ways of doing business and also strengthens the One Area Network initiative. I call upon telecom operators in the region that are not yet involved to come on board to enhance and ease the cost of doing business,” he said.

Dare Okoudjou, the founder and chief executive of MFS Africa, the pan-Africa mobile wallet aggregator behind the service, said the firm looks to provide innovations that benefit masses.

"We are excited to continue our partnership with MTN Rwanda, and especially to extend mobile remittance services to both Kenya and Uganda,” he said.