Stockholm-based telecommunication and media company Millicom announced this week that customers of its Tigo Pesa mobile money service in Tanzania will be the first in Africa to be able to transact with users of all their country's mobile money networks following an agreement with Vodacom's M-Pesa service.

The agreement means that four million Tigo Pesa users will for the first time be able to exchange money with six million M-Pesa customers in Tanzania later this year, according to a press release. They will be able to do this in the same way that they do already with Airtel and Zantel customers following the launch of similar services with Tigo in 2014. These were the first examples of such "interoperability" in Africa, according to the announcement.

"With Tigo Pesa customers will now have Africa's first universal mobile money exchange system," said Millicom Executive Vice President for Africa Arthur Bastings. "They will be able to safely and securely transact with millions more people across the country. It’s another first for Tigo Pesa and Tanzania. Following the success of the service with Airtel and Zantel, we hope many more Tanzanians will choose mobile money so that everyone benefits and we can extend financial inclusion even further. We also intend to pioneer similar agreements with networks elsewhere."

The initiative with M-Pesa follows a series of Tigo Pesa innovations within the last year, which have included:

• cross-border mobile money exchange with currency conversion included;
• the first internetwork mobile money exchange with Airtel in 2014; and
• quarterly returns on Tigo Pesa balances.