Ethio telecom, Mastercard deepen ties

Ethio telecom is not just selling phone service anymore. On April 8, its chief executive Frehiwot Tamru met a Mastercard team led by Shehryar Ali to push deeper into cross-border payments and remittances, which means moving money across borders through Ethio telecom’s own financial rails. (ecofinagency.com) The deal looks simple on paper: Ethio telecom brings telebirr, its mobile money app, and Mastercard brings a global payment network used in many countries. The point of the talks was tighter integration between Ethio telecom’s digital services and Mastercard’s international network for customers and businesses in Ethiopia. (techreviewafrica.com) That matters in Ethiopia because mobile money is still new by regional standards. Ethiopia only opened the door for non-banks to provide mobile money in 2020, and the country’s 2021 to 2025 National Financial Inclusion Strategy set a target of raising financial inclusion from 46% of adults to 70% by 2025. (gsma.com) Ethio telecom got a head start when it launched telebirr in May 2021. By July 2025, telebirr had passed 54 million users and processed 2.4 trillion Ethiopian birr in transactions, which gave the telecom company something banks and card networks spend years trying to build: daily habit at national scale. (techpression.com) Cross-border payments are the next step because domestic wallet growth eventually runs into a wall. A wallet is most useful when it can pay a merchant abroad, receive money from family overseas, or connect to an international card network instead of stopping at the border. (mastercard.com) Ethio telecom had already tested that idea with Visa before Mastercard moved deeper into the picture. In August 2024, Ethio telecom’s telebirr launched a virtual Visa card and money transfer tools tied to Telebirr Remit and Visa Direct, giving users a first bridge from a local wallet to international payment systems. (ecofinagency.com) (telebirr.ethiotelecom.et) Mastercard has been building its own bridgeheads across Ethiopia at the same time. In 2023 it signed with EthSwitch, the country’s national payment switch, and in 2024 it launched products with Cooperative Bank of Oromia, Hibret Bank, NIB International Bank, and EagleLion to expand international and cashless payment access. (mastercard.com 1) (mastercard.com 2) (mastercard.com 3) (mastercard.com 4) (mastercard.com 5) So this is not Mastercard arriving in an empty market. It is Mastercard deciding that if it wants international payment volume in Ethiopia, it needs the country’s biggest telecom operator, the wallet that already sits on millions of phones, and the distribution network that reaches people outside bank branches. (africabusinesscommunities.com) (gsma.com) Ethio telecom is also turning telebirr into a broader digital utility, not just a send-money app. In April 2026 it rolled out toll-road payments through telebirr, and in the same month it launched teleSign, a national digital signature and identity service tied to government workflows. (highways.today) (mobileidworld.com) That is why a payments partnership and a telecom company belong in the same sentence here. In Ethiopia, the company that owns the phone number, the wallet, the agent network, and now pieces of digital identity can become the front door for everything from remittances to tolls to cross-border commerce. (worldbank.org)