Tanzania operator Halotel vastly increased the scope and scale of its mobile money operation in 2018, with revenue from the service increasing 183 per cent year-on-year.

In comments reported by The Citizen, Halotel managing director Nguyen van Son credited a number of initiatives with helping bolster its mobile money operation including the launch of loans and interoperability with other providers.

Although Tanzania became the first country in Africa to provide interoperability between four rival mobile money services in 2014, it was only extended more widely in 2018.

During the year Viettel-owned Halotel also signed a deal with Visa to expand its links with mainstream banks.

Without offering specific figures, van Son said the company had recorded a 356 per cent increase in transaction value in 2018 compared to the previous year. It also increased the number of agents able to process transactions to its HaloPesa service from around 10,000 in 2017 to 155,000 at the end of 2018.

HaloPesa competes with similar services from the country’s other mobile operators including Vodacom’s m-Pesa, Airtel Money and TigoPesa.