Flutterwave has announced its partnership with Amole, Ethiopia’s largest mobile Digital Wallet platform, to facilitate money transfer into Ethiopia through Amole, to Amole Wallet, bank accounts, and cash pickup locations at over 2500 locations.
Amole offers its customers digital payment capabilities and access to digital products and services to enable users complete essential transactions at their convenience.
The new partnership with Flutterwave will serve the Ethiopian economy by making diaspora remittances easier for over 8M members of the Ethiopian Diaspora that remit over $5B annually to Ethiopia.
Flutterwave For Business users, Money Transfer Operators (MTOs) using Flutterwave and Barter by Flutterwave users can also send money into Ethiopia. Non-Barter users who receive inward remittances to Ethiopia can receive payments from other countries too.
The remittance service in Ethiopia today is seen by users to be expensive, with manual paperwork and delays making it challenging and time consuming for the diaspora community. This partnership solves these problems by providing instant delivery of funds to the receiver at no fee, with more control of where and how to send money, including transparency from a regulatory standpoint.
According to a report by the National Bank of Ethiopia, over 75% of Ethiopia’s population is unbanked, while nearly 40% of all bank branches are in the capital city Addis Ababa. While remittances play an important role in Ethiopia’s economies having considerably surged over the last two decades, increasing from USD 233 million in 2002/03 to USD 5.6 billion at the end of 2018/19, local communities and growing small business segments are underserved.
This collaboration will extend financial services to these communities, by facilitating remittances from diaspora Ethiopians, hence expanding business opportunities for small and growing businesses in these communities.
Subsequently, this will boost financial inclusion within the country as users of the service will have the option to collect cash from any of Amole’s 2,500 authorised agent locations, including the Ethiopian Postal Service with over 1400 locations, Hidase Telecom 860 locations and at any of the 450 Dashen Bank branches across the country.
Speaking on the partnership, Flutterwave Founder & Chief Executive Officer Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, said: “We are delighted to be collaborating with Amole to enable digital remittances and cash pickup into Ethiopia for the over 8 million Ethiopians in the diaspora.
“This is another significant milestone for payments in Africa as we work together to bridge the financial inclusion gap in the country and across the continent. Our collaboration will ensure that Ethiopian businesses are getting paid from all over the world, opening up massive opportunities for business growth, a goal we are passionate about. This is just the beginning and we hope to deepen the discussions around our partnership to the benefits of Africans, everywhere.”
Asfaw Alemu, CEO of Dashen Bank, said: “We are happy to partner with Flutterwave in delivering crucial forex that will support both our customers and Ethiopia. This partnership will play an important role in delivering even more value to our diaspora community, linking them to their country with more opportunities for global eCommerce in the near future.”
Yemiru Chanyalew, CEO Moneta Technologies, SC – said: “We are very excited to work with Flutterwave and leverage our combined technologies to broaden our offering to Ethiopian Diaspora community consumers and merchants to enable cross-border remittance and commerce. Amole as a payment and commerce platform we are increasingly focused on cashless payments and cross-border eCommerce transactions. Our combined efforts in enabling seamless and interoperable remittance and eCommerce payments will drive much desired financial inclusion in Ethiopia.”
