Free Senegal migrates to Comviva to boost mobile money offering
Free Senegal, the West African country’s second largest mobile network operator (MNO) by subscribers, has partnered with India-headquartered mobile operator Comviva to use its ‘mobiquity Money’ platform.
Comviva’s platform has already been deployed 60 times across 45 different countries, processing roughly $60 billion in transactions annually.
Originally known as Tigo until it rebranded last October, Free Senegal will use the migration to Comviva to build out “a host” of digital financial services through its digital wallet service ‘Free Money’, hoping to revamp digital payments across the country.
Launched in 2014, Free Money already offers digital financial services such as money transfer, bill payment, merchant payment and mobile credit recharge.
Senegal’s capital Dakar has a population of roughly 3 million, according to Macrotrends
It has 4.4 million subscribers to date, and rests on the 4G+ network available in most areas of the country.
Free Senegal says its migration from a legacy platform to mobiquity Money has, at the offset, increased its capacity, improved performance and heightened its security measures.
In the long-term, Comviva says the migration will allow Free Money to launch new features faster, acquire more customers and grow its transaction volume.
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Its architecture means establishing integrations between billers, merchants, banks, and remittance providers will also be easier, and on its website Comviva says the platform has the capabilities to give consumers “access to expanded micro-financial services such as savings, loans and insurance”.
Free Senegal’s CEO Mamadou Mbengue says the partnership is part of an effort to “democratise” digital financial services further.
“The new platform will facilitate product innovation, helping us to reinforce Free Money, launch new consumer-centric digital financial services and deliver superior user experience to our customers,” he adds.
In May 2018, Free Sengal, then called Tigo and owned by Swedish mobile telecom giant Millicom, was bought by Saga Africa Holdings consortium.
The consortium was made up of shareholders including French billionaire Xavier Niel’s private holding company NJJ, Malagasy millionaire Hassanein Hiridjee’s Sofima and Senegalese tycoon Yerim Sow’s Teyliom Group.
The acquisition was part of a bigger plan to make Tigo a key player in the Senegal’s economic and digital development.
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