Ethio Telecom signs strategic partnership with Ethiopian Customs Commission to collect tax digitally

In a quest to go beyond connectivity and bridge the digital and financial inclusion gap, thereby ensuring digital service accessibility nationwide, Ethio Telecom has signed a strategic partnership agreement with the Ethiopian Customs Commission that would enable customers of the Commission to settle tax and other related payments through telebier SuperApp.

The partnership agreement according to a statement released by ethio telecom, would play key roles to the customers of the commission for it allows them to easily settle their payments anywhere and anytime via telebirr SuperApp or USSD (*127#).

“Besides, it assists them to save time and money in preparing and delivering the CPO to customs center as well as to enable them to access to interoperable 19 banks to do cash in,” it said.

“Furthermore, the tax and commission payments integration, which is of the first ever digital payment system integration in the Customs Commission, will empower the Customs Commission to go its existing working systems digital, enhance to deliver fast and convenient customs service, enable to easily collect tax and commission payments in rear time, minimize operational cost, shorten the existing chain of process and procedure oriented business flows and easily collect tax and commission payments as well as avoid CPO payment frauds,” the statement confirmed.

The tax and commission payments integration with telebirr will have also a huge positive impact to the nation at large in improving Ethiopian logistics performance index, reducing warehouse cost and port rent cost, ensuring efficient custom clearance procedure, delivering goods in a reasonable time frame, decreasing product cost, attract foreign direct investment, encourage manufacturers as well as to empower the nation’s efforts being undertaken to build digital economy.

Telebirr digital payment platform has been an instrumental pillar in revolutionizing and fast-tracking the development of Ethiopia’s digital payment and digital economy since its launch to date showcasing its capabilities and achievements as a preferred platform. The platform has now acquired 31.3 million subscribers in less than two years playing critical roles in easing the day-to-day business activities of our society at large.

It has also 102 thousand agents, 34 thousand merchants and has been integrated with 19 banks. In addition, it has borrowed 2.24 billion birr to 1.63 million users as well as enables 473 thousand customers to deposit 2.11 billion birr in telebirr Sanduq (micro saving) service.

By: Kanto Okanta