Clear Junction, a London-based global fintech company that offers end-to-end regulated payment solutions based on in-house technology, has signed an agreement establishing a partnership with Zeepay, a leading African fintech company.

The partnership would allow Clear Junction to offer correspondent accounts for collecting payments in the European Union and the UK that will enable Zeepay's p2p remittance service for Ghanaians living in Europe, allowing them to send money to their families in the homeland.

The service is expected to be operational in the summer.

Countries such as Italy, France, and Spain have large African communities usually consisting of migrant workers who are socially and economically vulnerable, not to mention have been hit hard by the economic slowdown due to the COVID-19 virus.

The Zeepay p2p payment service aims to reduce transfer commissions for migrant workers and their families when sending money home.

In late March, the Bank of Ghana granted Zeepay a license to operate a full Electronic Money Issuer service, allowing customers to send and receive money across a 150,000 agent network and perform other financial services.

Zeepay was Ghana's first non-bank financial services company to get such a license. It has operations across Africa: in Uganda, Mozambique, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Cameroun, Côte d'Ivoire, and more.

"Together with Clear Junction we're bringing the European fintech revolution to Africa, and this will help to mitigate the lockdown's impact on people and society," said Zeepay director, Andrew Takyi-Appiah. "We offer our community a service that is cash-free and available without the need to go physically to the post office and wait in a line."

The agreement with Zeepay is a part of Clear Junction's strategy of extending the service to domestic payment operators worldwide. By this partnership, Clear Junction expands its services to Africa. In recent years the company has built similar relationships with banks and payment intermediaries in the UK, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, and other countries.

"Since Sub-Saharan Africa is traditionally considered a challenging region from the remittance perspective, we are glad to extend our service to an institution that just recently has satisfied the scrutiny of the local regulator," said Dima Kats, CEO of Clear Junction. "Our correspondent account service will lower the entry barrier for Zeepay when rolling out the payment collection in the EU and UK."

Clear Junction is an FCA-authorised payment operator from London, UK. Its correspondent account service enables regional banks and payment intermediaries to have access to the interbank clearing systems of the EU (SEPA) and UK (FasterPayments, BACS, CHAPS).

Zeepay is the fastest-growing fintech into Mobile Financial Services across Africa with Operations in Ghana and the United Kingdom and terminating to 20 countries across Africa and with termination agreements in over 90 jurisdictions globally.

It specializes in remittance termination into mobile wallets and completely network and partner agnostic. As a wholly-owned Ghanaian company, it is also regulated in the UK by Financial Conduct Authority-FCA and in Ghana by the Bank of Ghana.

Zeepay supports Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 3 and is considered a financial inclusion company positioned to improve last-mile access.