By Alexandra Wexler | From The Wall Street Journal

Africa’s biggest telecommunications companies are striking deals allowing their customers to make payments across networks and borders, the latest stride in the continent’s ascent as a leader in mobile financial technology.

Starting this month, London-based Vodafone Group PLC and South Africa’s MTN GroupLtd. plan to allow customers in East and Central Africa to send each other money, the first time Africa’s biggest telecoms have cooperated in the competitive mobile payment space.

Their new partnership could spur even more economic growth in these fast-growing markets, and drum up revenue for mobile companies in countries where demand for new cellphones and airtime has matured. Fierce competition is one reason MTN lost revenue per user in 19 of its 22 markets in the first quarter, MTN said.

“Finally, [telecoms] woke up and smelled the coffee,” said Hans Kuipers, a Johannesburg-based partner at the Boston Consulting Group. “In order to really develop a healthy ecosystem, you have to develop interconnectivity.”

The telecoms also hope that their partnership will give them a bigger slice of the $48 billion the World Bank estimates that Africans sent and received as remittances during 2014.

Until now, mobile companies have resisted “interoperable” partnerships as they raced to build their own market share. The most successful mobile-money service is the M-Pesa system started by Vodafone’s Kenyan subsidiary Safaricom Ltd. in 2007.

Today Safaricom’s 14 million M-Pesa customers pay for everything from safari lodge stays to taxi rides via the platform.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal