Airtel Africa, a telecom company with regional offices in different countries, has announced a new partnership with Mastercard.
According to TechCrunch, the company — which just received a $200 million investment from TPG’s Rise Fund — said that Mastercard will send another $100 million investment for its mobile money business.
Airtel Africa and Mastercard have done business before. In 2019, the company announced that their 100 million subscribers will have access to Mastercard’s global network. While that initial deal didn’t see any money exchanged between Mastercard and Airtel Africa, this latest partnership is a very different — and financially fruitful — story.
In a joint statement, both companies said that they “extended commercial agreements and signed a new commercial framework which will deepen their partnerships across numerous geographies and areas including card issuance, payment gateway, payment processing, merchant acceptance, and remittance solutions, amongst others.”
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According to Crunchbase, Airtel Africa has a total investment amount of $1.7 billion, with home offices in Tanzania. In addition to their mobile money services, the company offers mobile voice and data services, fixed line, high-speed broadband, IPTV, DTH, turnkey telecom solutions for enterprises, and national and international long-distance services to carriers. Like many companies based in Africa, it stands out by offering services to rural communities that otherwise don’t have access to such services.
