TerraPay partners Diamond Trust on cross-border transfers in Uganda

Key Takeaways

In the past ten years, remittances to Africa have doubled, reaching $100 billion in 2022; higher than foreign aid and investment. In some African countries, they account for as much as 20% of GDP. But despite their key role, remittances face high transfer fees, which can be as high as 20% of the amount transferred sometimes. Alongside partnerships like this, there are exciting developments in Uganda for remittances with improvements to domestic interoperability planned, roll-out of a new national ID scheme, a real-time eKYC scheme for ID verification planned, an innovative shared agency banking network to address rural financial inclusion, high-use of mobile money, a burgeoning fintech sector and new regulations for payment service providers. These could help create a more efficient and cheaper $13 billion remittance market.