MTN Mobile Money Zambia has officially launched its Cross-Border Merchant Payment service, enabling seamless and secure merchant payments between Zambia and East Africa through the MoMo platform.
The new service allows MTN MoMo customers in Zambia to make instant payments to merchants in Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania directly from their MoMo wallets. At the same time, customers from these East African countries can now conveniently pay merchants in Zambia using their own mobile money wallets, strengthening regional trade and digital commerce across borders.
Speaking during the announcement in Nakonde, Remittance and Interoperability Manager for MTN Mobile Money Zambia, Remmingtone Milambo, said the innovation reflects MTN MoMo’s commitment to building a connected and borderless digital financial ecosystem across Africa.
“This service strengthens trade and financial connectivity between Zambia and the East African region by enabling customers to make and receive merchant payments seamlessly across borders. Whether customers are travelling, shopping remotely, or conducting business transactions, the service offers a simple, safe, and reliable digital payment experience,” he said.
“MTN MoMo Zambia is doing something that has not been done before at this scale in Africa -turning a mobile wallet into a cross-border merchant payment instrument across five countries simultaneously. That is exactly what Xend is built for. Our role is to remove the infrastructure complexity that has historically made this kind of interoperability so difficult to achieve, so that operators like MTN can focus on what they do best: serving their customers and growing their business. This is the network effect of Xend beginning to show.” said Ambar Sur, Founder and CEO, TerraPay.
The service supports a wide range of personal and business transactions, including paying for goods and services while travelling, purchasing stock from suppliers across the region, settling business payments, shopping remotely from neighbouring countries, and enabling international visitors to pay merchants conveniently while in Zambia.
Commenting on the launch, Abednego Mhagama, Executive Head of Vodacom Tanzania PLC’s South Region, said: “This partnership is an extension of our global payments solutions, and it reflects the growing importance of cross-border digital financial services in supporting regional trade and economic integration across Africa. Tanzania and Zambia have long been connected through trade, investment, and infrastructure, and today we are strengthening that connection through digital innovation. By enabling cross-border merchant payments between our markets, we are helping create an environment where businesses can participate more easily in regional commerce and contribute to Africa’s increasingly connected economy.”
By enabling interoperable merchant payments across multiple African markets, MTN Mobile Money Zambia continues to advance financial inclusion and support regional economic integration through innovative digital payment solutions.
MTN MoMo integrated with Xend, TerraPay’s wallet interoperability network, which is designed to give wallet operators cross-border reach across multiple markets through a single integration, rather than the bilateral country-by-country arrangements that have traditionally defined how mobile money expands internationally.
Xend acts as the shared infrastructure layer that allows MTN MoMo Zambia to reach multiple East African markets simultaneously and gives wallet operators across the region a common network through which their customers can transact. For MTN MoMo Zambia, connecting to Xend means connecting to a growing network of wallets and merchants across Africa and beyond, without the complexity of building each corridor independently.
The service is designed to support the growing number of individuals and businesses travelling, trading, studying, and operating across the region. Customers can now pay for goods and services across participating countries without the need to carry cash, exchange currency, or rely on traditional payment channels.
Importantly, the service can be used both while travelling and remotely from a customer’s home country. This means a customer in Zambia can pay a merchant in Uganda, Rwanda, or Tanzania directly from Zambia, while customers in those countries can also pay merchants in Zambia instantly and securely from their mobile money wallets.
Customers can make payments easily through the new MoMo App by tapping the “Scan QR” option without logging in, scanning a merchant QR code, or manually entering the merchant ID and following the payment prompts. Once the transaction is completed, customers receive instant confirmation via SMS. For feature phone users or those without mobile data, the service is also accessible via USSD.
All cross-border payments are processed using the prevailing exchange rate on the day of the transaction, enabling customers to transact conveniently while currency conversion happens automatically within the MoMo platform.
Digital wallets now account for 56 per cent of global e-commerce value and 33 per cent of in-store spending, according to Worldpay’s 2026 Global Payments Report. As wallet adoption deepens across Africa, the ability to use those wallets at merchants across borders becomes an increasingly important dimension of financial inclusion, one that Xend is built to enable at scale.
Customers can access the service by downloading the new MoMo App via the Google Play Store or App Store.
