Wednesday, 3rd September 2025
By inAfrika Reporter
Tanzania’s central bank has tightened the rails for international money sent into the country. Effective 1 August 2025, the Bank of Tanzania requires all incoming international money transfers (IMTs) to be processed through the Tanzania Instant Payment System (TIPS)—the same national switch that connects banks and mobile money providers for real-time retail payments. The directive pushes cross-border inflows into a single clearing lane, promising faster settlement and cleaner compliance data, while forcing providers to re-wire their back-ends to stay in the game.
The timing rides a usage wave. In 2024, TIPS notched TZS 29.82 trillion in value—about US$11.6 billion—up 143% year-on-year, with transaction counts jumping to ~452–454 million. The Bank’s National Payment System Annual Report attributes that surge to more participants and growing adoption of P2P, B2B and government-linked use cases. For consumers and SMEs, that history matters: a switch already handling this much domestic traffic is now the mandated highway for dollars, euros and pounds arriving from abroad.
What changes first is latency and visibility. Providers accustomed to bilaterals and proprietary gateways must now jack into TIPS for the last mile, which should trim hop-to-hop delays and reduce mismatches between wallets and bank accounts. The central switch also standardises the compliance footprint—consistent time stamps, fields, and audit trails—something banks and regulators have pushed for as transaction volumes balloon. The new rule doesn’t automatically cap fees, but it narrows the excuses: with a single rail at the core, providers will find it harder to justify opaque pricing when the back-end is harmonised. Expect a first round of fee and exchange-rate experimentation over September as PSPs reprice to reflect a more predictable cost base.
Scale is the other part of the story. TIPS’ 2024 totals—29.8–29.9 trillion shillings in value and ~454 million transactions—give the Bank leverage to demand consistent service levels. As integration with GePG (government e-payments) deepens, corporates will gain new ways to reconcile cross-border receivables against domestic obligations in the same dashboard—payroll one side, tax and fees on the other. For exporters and digital businesses with diaspora customers, this removes some of the “last mile” guesswork that made settlement times and charge-backs a monthly headache.
The market reaction has been to amplify the numbers. Fintech trade media and regional outlets have picked up the BoT data—repeating the US$11.6bn headline and tallying 46 participants on the switch by end-2024. That doesn’t replace the regulator’s PDF, but it shows how quickly the TIPS narrative is being baked into investor decks and product roadmaps. For content teams, those secondary reports are useful amplifiers; for compliance and treasury, the primary source remains the Bank’s own annual report and circulars.
There are two immediate watch-items. First, FX conversion logic at the handoff: PSPs will vary on when and where they convert currency before crediting a wallet or account via TIPS, and that will shape the effective rate a customer sees. Second, exception handling for edge cases—bulk salary files from abroad, charity disbursements with special conditions, or refunds. Those workflows will settle over September as providers publish updated guides. The central bank’s move is unapologetically about interoperability and traceability; if it also squeezes a few percentage points off end-user costs over time, that will be a political and commercial bonus.
Bottom line: the BoT has turned TIPS from a domestic convenience into the mandatory on-ramp for money coming into Tanzania. If you send or receive cross-border funds, the practical advice is simple: update beneficiary details, expect faster credits, and compare providers again—because with a common rail, the difference will increasingly be price and customer service, not plumbing. And if you’re a bank or PSP still finishing the wiring, users will judge you by how little they notice the switchover.
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