World Remit, the digital money transfer service and Chinese smartphone maker, Huawei, have teamed up to enable the international transfer of money across the phone maker’s mobile services in Africa, both companies said Tuesday in a report filed by Reuters the news agency. Mobile money services that allow customers to transfer funds using their phones have proved hugely popular in parts of Africa, particularly where people have less access to traditional bank accounts. "International remittance is a very important mobile money service in Africa, and our partnership with WorldRemit will bring international remittances directly to Huawei’s customers across the continent," David Chen, Vice-President of Huawei Southern Africa, said in a statement. Safaricom's mobile phone-based financial service M-Pesa in east Africa has already seen success in this market.

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The partnership will allow London-based WorldRemit to connect to over 100 million mobile accounts currently using Huawei’s platform, which delivers basic banking transactions through its mobile money offerings on smartphones and basic handsets. The deal will reduce the barrier of technical integrations with new mobile money operators to offer international remittances for mobile network operators to enable all Huawei partners to swiftly switch on this service, WorldRemit and Huawei said.