Africa: Access Africa and Thunes Collaborate to Enhance Cross-Border Payments in 13 African Countries

In a strategic partnership, Access Africa and Thunes are joining forces to revolutionize cross-border payments, aiming to provide faster, more affordable digital payment solutions and support international trade across multiple countries.

Thunes, a global payment infrastructure platform connecting over 130 countries into a single network, has teamed up with Access Africa to streamline and simplify cross-border transfers and payments across Africa and beyond. The collaboration enables Access Africa to facilitate inbound and outbound cross-border payments in 13 African markets, including Botswana, Cameroon, Congo DR, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Zambia.

Robert Giles, Senior Advisory Retail, expressed, “This strategic partnership reinforces Access Africa’s commitment to providing customers and non-customers with access to top-quality remittance services.”

Thunes, founded in 2016, is a cross-border payments network that facilitates seamless fund transfers and financial services in emerging markets for corporates and financial institutions.

This collaboration significantly expands Access Africa’s payment and remittance services, offering connectivity to over 100 more countries and reaching Access Africa’s 60 million+ customers with over 600 branch locations.

As part of the partnership, both account and non-account holders of Access Africa will have the ability to make straightforward international payments and receive diaspora inflows in USD from various regions, including Africa, the Americas, APAC, Europe, Greater China, and MENA, in the form of cash or bank deposits.

By leveraging modern digital payment technology, this collaboration aims to eliminate the complexities associated with traditional bank-based cross-border payment processes, resulting in faster, more convenient, and transparent transactions.

Robert Giles added, “This collaboration will bring significant improvements to the African Fintech ecosystem and payment infrastructure.”

Aik Boon Tan, Executive Vice President for Thunes, shared his excitement about the future of this partnership, saying, “We are excited for the future of our partnership with Access Africa as we aim to enhance the connections between Africa and the rest of the world, bringing major improvements to customers who need to make regular cross-border payments to and from African markets.”

Access Africa offers a payment product designed to simplify global payments, covering Person to Person, Business to Business, Person to Business, Government to Person, and other payment activities/flows. It enables efficient transfers, including school fees payments, merchant payments, e-commerce payments, trade payments, and diaspora worker payments, among others. Access Africa provides corridors to countries such as the United Kingdom, China, Spain, Turkey, France, Italy, Germany, Cyprus, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, Hong Kong, Ghana, Gambia, Rwanda, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, DR Congo, Mozambique, Guinea, Botswana, and more.

Access Bank is a leading financial institution serving various markets through four business segments: Retail, Business, Commercial, and Corporate. With a strong focus on innovation, technology, and customer service, Access Bank operates through a network of over 700 branches and service outlets across three continents, 20 countries, and serving over 60 million customers.

Thunes is a B2B payments company building global infrastructure for seamless, instant, and transparent money movement. Offering modular capabilities, Thunes empowers customers to Pay, Accept, Exchange, and Comply, bridging the gap between payment systems in developed and emerging markets. With the ability to facilitate payments in 80 currencies across 133 countries, using over 300 payment methods, Thunes supports dynamic businesses worldwide. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Singapore, Thunes has offices in 20 locations, including Beijing, Nairobi, London, Paris, Dubai, and Barcelona.

For Thunes media inquiries, please contact Headland Consultancy: thunes@headlandconsultancy.com, +44 (0)77 1782 7258 (Drew Salisbury).