Last week, WorldRemit users in Uganda were shocked to receive a notification informing them of the cessation of some transactions from the digital payments service that provides international money transfer and remittance services. The company operates in more than 130 countries and over 70 currencies.
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The message read in part “From 6 June, WorldRemit will not be accepting any new money transfers or airtime top-ups from Uganda. From 6 July, WorldRemit will be fully closing money sending services in Uganda, and our relationship with you will come to an end.” This change affects money transfers and airtime top-ups sent from Uganda only. Transfers to Uganda are not impacted by this change.
This comes at a time when Uganda has been put among the top 25 countries in the 2022 high-risk “Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing” list. The list shows countries that are not abiding by the set regulations on 28th March 2022. In January 2022, The Executive Director of the Finance Intelligence Authority, Sydney Asubo revealed that Uganda risks being blacklisted by the Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) if the government does not tackle money laundering by May 2022.
For WorldRemit customers, this means, that transfers created before 6 June 2022 will be processed as usual, and users will continue to receive SMS and email updates about their transfer’s progress even beyond this date.
If there is a problem with the customer’s transfer (for example, your recipient details are incorrect), WorldRemit will contact them via email. If you are already in touch with us about a past transfer, you can continue to talk to our Customer Care team. If a customer wishes to amend or cancel their transfer and they are no longer able to access their account via web or app, they have been advised to contact the company’s customer care.
Ugandan WorldRemit users will be able to continue to access their past transactions and recipient details by logging into their accounts via the WorldRemit website. However, they will no longer be able to log into the WorldRemit app. The company maintains that the user’s data will continue to be, managed securely in accordance with its data privacy policy. Uganda joins Singapore and Russia among the countries where transactions have been blocked.
