What changed
In December 2025, Vodacom Tanzania widened its M-Pesa Global product so a Tanzanian M-Pesa user can send directly to an M-Pesa wallet in Kenya, Uganda or Rwanda without going through a partner bank or a remittance hub. The change brings Tanzania closer to the EAC instant-transfer experience Safaricom already runs out of Kenya.
The transfer settles within seconds and the receiving wallet sees the funds at no charge. The sending tariff uses the domestic withdrawal band of the sending country — i.e. there is no separate cross-border markup — which is how the EAC corridor pages already calculate today.
TerraPay as the technical backbone
M-Pesa Global's cross-border M-Pesa to M-Pesa flow is powered by TerraPay, a Bengaluru-headquartered cross-border payments hub that has progressively integrated the EAC M-Pesa instances since 2022. TerraPay handles the message routing, FX conversion and settlement reconciliation between Vodacom Tanzania and Safaricom Kenya / MTN Rwanda / MTN Uganda. The Tanzanian expansion is mostly a result of Vodacom completing its certification and rolling out the relevant flows in its own M-Pesa app, rather than a new technical capability on TerraPay's side.
Alipay link for inbound from China
A related strand of the same M-Pesa Global expansion is the Alipay corridor, which lets Chinese Alipay users send directly to Tanzanian M-Pesa wallets. China is a smaller but rapidly growing source of inbound flows to East Africa, driven by Chinese contractor employees, traders and the broader Belt-and-Road infrastructure footprint. The Alipay → M-Pesa Tanzania route bypasses the previously costly USD-CNY-USD-TZS chain and removes one FX conversion.
What about the levy
Tanzania still applies its withdrawal levy (capped at TZS 4,000 per transaction). That levy hits cash-outs at agents only — it does not apply to a sender's wallet-to-wallet outbound. See the Tanzania country page for the full breakdown.
EAC implications
The Tanzanian expansion fills the last major gap in the EAC M-Pesa instant-transfer mesh. Before December 2025, a Tanzanian user wanting to pay a Kenyan M-Pesa user had to route via a partner bank or a third-party app; from December 2025, the path is M-Pesa app to M-Pesa app in under a minute. This brings the EAC corridor user experience to near-parity with the WAEMU PI-SPI launch from September 2025, though EAC corridors are not yet free — operator domestic-band fees still apply.
Why now
The expansion lines up with the broader EAC push toward a regional instant-payment rail and is competitive pressure from the WAEMU PI-SPI launch on 30 September 2025, which made WAEMU individual transfers free. EAC corridors are not yet free, but the latency and onboarding friction are now much closer to the WAEMU experience.
Cross-link
For per-corridor pricing, see the EAC page and the Tanzania → Kenya corridor specifically.