Ethio Telecom, Immigration Service sign partnership agreement for Passport payments via telebirr
The state-telecom giant Ethio Telecom and Immigration and Citizenship Service (ICS) have signed a partnership agreement to make passport payments digitally through telebirr, a mobile money service.
The agreement has been signed between Frehiwot Tamiru, Ethio Telecom’s CEO and Birhutesfa Mulugeta, Director General of ICS on Thursday at Ethiopian Skylight Hotel.
The service will enable customers to get new passport issuance, renewal, lost passport replacement and damaged passport improvement services by easily settling the fees through telebirr payment platform.
The new partnership will also remove the necessity to queue and other hiccups customers have been facing by enabling them to get the service easily on their smart phone, Frehiwot said.
She hopes that expansion of such services will accelerate the digitalization process of Ethiopia.
ICS is serving 1500 to 2000 customers in a day, who require to passport renewal and replace lost passports.
“The new service will satisfy the need to have such easy payment modalities at ICS,” Birhutesfa Mulugeta, Director General of ICS said.
This telebirr payment platform has so far managed to get more than 19.95 million subscribers, over 82 master agents, 69.8 thousand agents and 18.8 thousand businesses in a year.
Telebirr has been also integrated with 12 banks to transfer money from bank to telebirr and with 10 banks transferring money from telebirr to bank. As the platform is widely preferable in the society for e-money payments, 20.63 billion-Birr transactions were made so far.
