Cash Go, one of Ethiopia’s premier digital remittance platforms, has returned with features suited to the floated currency. The financial platform owned by Eaglelion System Technology debuted its updated features two days ago with exchange rate offerings reflecting banking industry amounts.
Cash Go had temporarily paused its service when the Ethiopian government floated the Birr.
Bersufekad Getachew, founding CEO of Eaglelion explained that the exchange rates respond to the figures realized by the commercial banks integrated into the system.
“There are no transaction fees,” he told Shega.
The app offers bank transfers directly to branches and cash pick-ups with the latest exchange rates depicted from three local banks. Ethiopia’s biggest bank the state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, Dashen Bank, and the Bank of Abyssinia (BoA) are available via the Cash Go app. The company also has agreements with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express with the app available for both Apple and Android devices.
As soon as users enter the amount in US dollars an equivalent figure in Birr is automatically generated. Moreover, when the money is sent it instantly arrives in the receiver’s account.
The app initially launched in cooperation with BoA is one of the few digital platforms in the country which provides remittance services.
Regulatory crackdown by the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE)resulted in the brief suspension of digital remittance services two years ago until they were lifted back three months later.
Remittances are an essential element of Ethiopia’s foreign currency earnings accounting for a quarter of the country’s earnings two years back with 6.8 billion dollars.
The discrepancy between parallel and official exchange rate figures has effectively nullified with the latest rates by commercial banks offering an above 110 birr against the dollar. A figure with a fluctuating difference of a few birrs according to rates indicated by Telegram channels tracking parallel markets.
Ethiopia’s shift towards a market-based exchange rate regime has opened up new business frontiers including exchange bureaus, FX accounts, and remittance services to fin-tech companies.
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