UK to Kenya remittance cheapest in Africa

The cost of sending money to Kenya from the United Kingdom is cheapest in Africa, a report by DMA, a global payment consultancy firm has revealed.

According to the report, a person sending money from UK to Kenya incur a transaction fee of four per cent of total amount, 8.2 per cent to Uganda, 9.7 and 9.8 per cent to Rwanda and Tanzania respectively.

Sending money from UK to South Africa costs 5.5 per cent of the total amount, 7.7 per cent to Nigeria and 10 per cent to Eritrea. South Sudan has the highest remittance fee from UK in Africa at 11 per cent of total amount.

Even so, remittance from UK to any country in Africa is above the globally accepted fee of three per cent of the total amount.

The lower remittance fee to Kenya is attributed to the country’s vibrant mobile and digital money transfer platforms like M-Pesa, PesaLink and bank applications

WorldRemit, an international mobile money remittance company believe that Tanzania can lower its remittance costs by up to 50 per cent if it adopts mobile to mobile remittances.

‘’Mobile to mobile transfers remove all the indirect costs such as traveling to an agency to pay in and collect money, the cut paid to a third party doing this on your behalf, time off work and many more,’’ read a statement fromWorldRemit

It added that with just under $390 million being sent in remittances to Tanzania globally, the saving could increase funds entering the country’s economy by ten folds.

WorldRemit announced this in Dar es Salaam yesterday where it launched partnership with Huawei which will enable WorldRemit to accelerate the growth of its mobile money network internationally.

SOURCE:THE STAR