TerraPay and Wave Mobile Money Launch Instant Cross-Border Remittances for 2.5 Million Mali Users
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TerraPay has partnered with Wave Mobile Money to enable instant, low-cost cross-border remittances directly into mobile wallets for 2.5 million active users in Mali. The partnership strengthens formal remittance channels in a market heavily reliant on inflows from abroad, where mobile money has become the dominant financial entry point, especially for unbanked and underserved communities.
This integration leverages TerraPay’s global payments network to route transfers from multiple money transfer operators in the US, Canada, and Europe into Wave wallets through a single connection point. With approximately 94.2 percent mobile phone penetration in Mali as of early 2025, mobile wallets offer broad access to financial services amid a population where traditional banking remains limited. Wave Mobile Money, founded in 2018 and active across seven West African markets, continues to expand digital payment access while ensuring regulatory compliance in collaboration with Orabank Mali.
The partnership addresses long-standing structural barriers in West Africa’s remittance ecosystem, including high transaction costs, slow settlement times, liquidity constraints, and reliance on informal transfer channels. The integration of mobile money systems with a real-time cross-border payments infrastructure improves efficiency, increases retail-level liquidity, and encourages users to shift toward regulated financial services. For context, remittance costs for sending modest amounts to Sub-Saharan Africa remain among the highest globally, often exceeding 7 percent of transaction value, making innovations like this crucial for improving affordability.
This initiative also has significant implications for financial institutions and payment providers by potentially driving higher transaction volume and user engagement. To succeed at scale, the partnership’s impact depends on regulatory alignment, interoperability across multiple markets, and sustained adoption among Mali’s sizeable diaspora. Its success could serve as a model for deeper financial inclusion and formalization of remittance flows across the region.
