Xoom, PayPal’s money transfer service that serves millions of diaspora users globally has today launched money transfers to mobile wallets in Kenya and other markets in Africa for customers in the US, UK, Canada, and Europe. This is a timely move given that Kenya had remittances of Kes. 285 Billion in 2019 and this amount is expected to rise to Kes. 325 Billion by the end of 2020.

Remittances from Kenyans in the Diaspora are booming with the COVID-19 pandemic a key driver at this time so Xoom is tapping into a growing trend. Mobile money, and, especially Safaricom’s M-Pesa is huge in Kenya given that there are approximately 60 Million mobile money subscribers as of this writing.

Mobile money transactions in Kenya are also growing as everyone avoids cash and adopts digital payments as part of social distancing measures. Mobile money and remittances are a perfect fit for Kenya and PayPal already offers a service via Safaricom’s M-Pesa that enables users in Kenya to ‘cash out’ money from their PayPal accounts to M-Pesa.

The new Xoom mobile money transfer service is being launched in Kenya as well as Cameroon, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – with plans to include more markets in 2021. It will also reduce the cost of money transfers over other existing alternatives offered in Kenya and Africa at this time.

In order to use the Xoom money transfer service to mobile money accounts in Kenya, users in the designated markets only need to download Xoom’s mobile app on Android and iOS or go to Xoom.com and set up an account easily or log-in with using PayPal credentials. That’s it!