Nairobi — WorldRemit, a British money-transfer operator, expects revenue from transactions involving Africans to double by 2020 as more people on the continent access mobile-payment platforms and expatriates send cash home. The seven-year-old company, in which Facebook-backer Accel Partners invested $40m in 2014, would in 2017 open a regional office in SA, its largest market on the continent in terms of money-transfer value, founder and CEO Ismail Ahmed said in an interview. Another site would start operating in Kenya, where the London-based business expected Africa’s highest number of individual transactions. "In the next two years we should be doubling our volume every year," Ahmed said in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The continent accounted for half the company’s 2016 revenue of £41m, he said, declining to give profit figures. WorldRemit is tapping into growing demand in Africa for mobile-payments, which are popular in places where banks are scarce or unreliable yet internet speeds ...
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