MoneyGram International has announced a strategic partnership with Astra Tech (Astra), a technology investment and development group based in the UAE and the owner of BOTIM, a popular Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) with over 90 million registered users. Through this innovative partnership, BOTIM is one of the region's first communications platform to enable its users to seamlessly send money around the world in near real-time. The service is expected to be available to BOTIM users in the UAE in February 2023.
Officials from MoneyGram said that as they increasingly look to capture growth by opening their global network to new use cases, they are happy to offer their international money transfer capabilities on a messaging platform across the Middle East. Not only do consumers around the world rely on MoneyGram for their daily financial needs, but more organisations are seeking to embed their fintech capabilities into their service offerings.
Astra Tech is on a mission to create a platform that will offer everything from instant messaging to digital payments. Earlier in January 2023, Astra Tech acquired BOTIM, making the company one of the largest communications technology platforms in the MENA region. After recently distributing a poll asking consumers which new service they were most interested in accessing through the BOTIM app, more than 2 million responses in 48 hours indicated that international money transfer was the top priority.
Also commenting on the new partnership, representatives from Asta Tech stated that collaborating with MoneyGram will allow them to leverage their security and offer BOTIM users good financial services. Together, they are revolutionising international money transfers by making it as seamless as sending a text message. This represents BOTIM’s ability to connect people not only socially but also financially, while demonstrating their arrival as one of the first chat-based communication platform that enables people to send money home with a click of a button.
MoneyGram has been continuously building its P2P payment networks, and this announcement highlights the potential for all kinds of organisations to plug into that. This partnership take form as it advances MoneyGram’s position in the Middle East and spurs a positive impact for its business while it continues uncovering new opportunities to create meaningful processing revenue in the future.
MoneyGram International is a global financial technology company that enables consumers and businesses to move and manage money in nearly every country around the world. Through its expansive set of fintech offerings, MoneyGram provides millions of consumers annually the ability to seamlessly send money home to family and friends, store money in mobile wallets, and buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies on its app. The Company's innovative cross-border platform enables its customers to send funds directly into bank accounts and mobile wallets or cash-in and cash-out more than 135 currencies and numerous cryptocurrencies through its large cash distribution networks around the world.
Modern, mobile, and API-driven, MoneyGram's white-labelled remittance service also provides some of the world's top brands and organisations the ability to disburse funds directly to their consumer clients.
BOTIM, known for VoIP across the MENA region, is now transforming from a communication app into an ultra app. BOTIM will offer many services, including fintech, government services, pharmacy, retail, and more, for its users to make their lives more digital, seamless, and convenient. Established in 2017, BOTIM operates in 155 countries, offering free video and voice calls, money transfers within UAE, phone recharges and bill payments locally and internationally, group chats and group calls, gaming, health features, and a Quran book reading. Astra Tech, a UAE-based technology development group, acquired BOTIM in 2022.
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