NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

VENTURES AFRICA – UK-based telecom giant, Orange and the French banking group, BNP Paribas have teamed up to roll out mobile money services for Africans, joining the growing pool of mobile money providers and reaffirming the increasing prominence the innovative service is taking in the continent’s financial sector.

This new service is available starting today in Côte d’Ivoire and will be extended to other countries in which BNP Paribas and Orange Money are present, particularly Senegal.

The service allows customers of the BNP Paribas group (BICICI in Côte d’Ivoire) to carry out real-time banking operations without going to their banks, simply by using their Orange Money account.

This flexibility in transferring money between bank accounts and mobile accounts will make it easier to use the services already offered by Orange Money, such as payment for goods and services (water, electricity and television bills, etc.) and purchases of airtime credit.

“Orange Money and BNP Paribas are joining forces to deploy Orange Money services to banking customers in their common sales territories in Africa,” says Thierry Millet, Director of the Payments and Contactless Programme at Orange.