An agreement between Vodafone Group and TransferTo, a mobile remittance hub, enables operators that offer M-Pesa, the mobile money service, to interconnect with sending and receiving partners globally.

The first live connection is in Kenya, the most famous M-Pesa deployment. The agreement covers all the countries where the money service is offered, including Tanzania, Ghana, South Africa, DRC, Mozambique and Lesotho.

The partnership gives the money transfer service an international dimension, enabling users to send payments within Africa or to receive payments in their M-Pesa accounts from financial institutions elsewhere in the world.

Traditionally, M-Pesa has been a domestic money transfer service, handling payments sent, and received, within Kenya, for instance.

As a result of the partnership, payments to M-Pesa users are routed via TransferTo’s mobile money hub, which was launched in autumn last year.

The firm says the partnership will make sending cash to multiple M-Pesa accounts quicker and easier.

Sending payments to a user’s mobile money account is just one way that a user in Europe, the Middle East or US, for instance, can transfer cash to friends and family in the developing world.

Other options include transferring cash to a bank account, but only a minority of users in developing countries typically have bank accounts. Another approach is to send payments to a user’s pre-paid mobile account in the form of top-ups.

“By making it faster and easier for consumers to send money to multiple M-Pesa accounts, we are giving M-Pesa users greater freedom to spend and receive money, while accelerating the growth of Mobile Money accounts worldwide,” said TransferTo CEO Eric Barbier (pictured).