By Silvia Nyambura
Shell Licensee Vivo Energy and Airtel Africa have announced a partnership across their Pan African markets aimed at strengthening both companies’ footprint in providing services to their growing customer base. The partnership involves the use of Airtel Money to build a cashless ecosystem across the continent by ensuring that Shell service stations will be Cash In Cash Out points for Airtel Money customers. This will give communities substantially more Airtel Money agent points through the Vivo Energy’s network of Shell Retail Service Stations and Select shops in all current and future countries in Africa in which both Airtel and Vivo Energy operate.
This means Airtel Money will be an accepted mode of payment in all Shell service stations while Airtel Airtime and float for Airtel Money agents will also be available at Shell fuel outlets.
Speaking in a press release seen by the CEO Magazine David Mureithi, Executive Vice President Supply and Marketing at Vivo Energy said, “Mobile money represents huge opportunity with the unbanked and also banked population of Africa. At the end of 2013, we had more than 730 million mobile phones registered in Africa. This represents a 70 percent penetration in the population.