South African Reserve Bank approves TerraPay launch

TerraPay has revealed that the company has successfully obtained regulatory approval from the South African Reserve Bank to launch Cross-border money transfer services in South Africa.

The approval sees TerraPay become the fifth company to be licensed as a category three Authorised Dealer in Foreign Exchange with limited authority, also known as ADLA 3, to conduct low-value international money transfers in the country.

This move forms part of TerraPay’s plan to build a global payments infrastructure for low-value cross-border transactions. The service interconnects mobile wallet service providers, financial institutions and money transfer operators in key send and receive markets. The license enables the company to enter into cross-border low-value person-to-person payments in South Africa.

According to the company, the South Africa market is highly complementary to their international money transfer network in Africa, Europe and Middle-East countries.

In the Initial roll-out, TerraPay will enable cross border money transfers from South Africa to mobile wallets in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Mozambique and Uganda.

Speaking on the approval Ambar Sur, Founder & CEO of TerraPay said that, “As per a report from FinMark Trust, the bulk of remittance flows from South Africa are destined for Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho, with 85 percent of all migrants originating from these countries. Moreover, almost 70percent of transfers to these countries are conducted informally, since the high cost of formal money transfers is a major barrier to accessing formal remittance channels. TerraPay is taking an aim to solve this problem of the migrants, by facilitating instant and cost-effective low-value money transfers to mobile wallets. We are now open for business in South Africa and are actively looking to build strategic partnerships to further expand our footprint in the Southern Africa region.”

According to TerraPay, South Africa is a major send as well as a receive market. Apart from sending remittances to all neighbouring Southern African countries, the country also receives remittances from UK, Australia and US.

Edited By: Dean Workman
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