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botim Money Links With TerraPay For Africa Transfers

The UAE remittance arm of the company will add real-time wallet checks and instant payouts across four separate African markets.

Published

7 months ago

February 3, 2026

Nour Nasir

botim money links with terrapay for africa transfers

botim money has plugged into TerraPay’s global payments infrastructure, widening its remittance reach from the UAE into a set of African markets and adding real-time recipient checks before cash moves.

The integration lets users send funds through direct bank deposits or straight to mobile wallets, with account details validated upfront to reduce failed or delayed transfers. The change is live, according to the company.

Initial payment corridors include Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and Egypt — markets where mobile money often stands in for a bank account and speed matters more than anything else.

“For customers, remittances are about reliability. If a transfer fails or is delayed, it has real consequences for families waiting on the other side. That’s why certainty matters as much as speed,” said Hesham Sherif, head of remittance at botim. “Our partnership with TerraPay strengthens our remittance infrastructure across the world, especially in key African corridors through real-time validation and broader payout coverage, improving success rates and delivery”.

Remittances into Africa hit an estimated $96.4 billion in 2024, about 5.2% of regional GDP, making basic plumbing — payout coverage, verification, settlement speed — more critical than feature sets. Missed transfers can mean missed rent or school fees. That pressure has pushed providers to prioritize reliability over bells and whistles.

The tie-up also opens botim’s UAE user base to TerraPay’s network, effectively turning the app into another on-ramp for cross-border flows.

Also Read: Saudi Digital Payments Reach 80% As Cash Use Shrinks

“Remittances are a critical financial lifeline for millions of families across the world, and reliability is non-negotiable,” said Bassem Awada, senior vice president at TerraPay. “Our partnership with botim money brings together TerraPay’s global payments infrastructure and real-time wallet validation with botim’s strong presence in the UAE, enabling faster, more secure cross-border transfers into the globe”.

The move deepens botim money’s shift from messaging into finance. The service sits inside the Botim ecosystem, owned by Astra Tech, which has been layering payments and financial tools on top of its communications base. For UAE fintechs chasing the country’s expatriate workforce, remittances remain the most direct path to scale, and the hardest to get wrong.

Related Topics:Botim Money FinTech TerraPay

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Instagram Redraws Its Wordmark And The Internet Reads “Instagzam”

Instagram’s first wordmark refresh in a decade arrives with new fonts, a restrained gradient — and a Reddit verdict of sidegrade.

Published

4 days ago

August 14, 2026

Nour Nasir

Instagram

Although Instagram’s famous camera icon hasn’t changed, the company has refreshed the handwritten wordmark at the top of its app. This is the first redesign we’ve seen in ten years, and one the internet promptly set about renaming.

“The wordmark at the top of the app hasn’t changed in 10 years, so it was time for a refresh,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote in a post on August 13, describing the new version as “cleaner and more modern” while keeping references to the original design.

Instagram says its team explored hundreds of options — all-caps lettering, camera-inspired concepts, even literal handwriting — before returning to script. “Script reflects individuality, so referencing that felt right,” Instagram director of product design Jasmine Probst said in Meta’s announcement. “The new wordmark is bolder and simpler, with touches of unexpectedness. It cues individual expression, a personal voice, both of which have always been core to Instagram”.

The wordmark is part of a broader brand overhaul: an updated Instagram Sans typeface, two new fonts — the hand-drawn Instagram Pen and Instagram Mono — plus refreshed motion and layouts, and more restrained use of the signature gradient. The wordmark is rolling out globally now, with the rest arriving throughout 2026 and beyond.

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The design mixes cursive and print lettering, some characters connected and others floating free. That hybrid approach, combined with unusually shaped “s” and “r” characters, led some users to conclude the logo actually reads “Instagzam”. On the r/logodesign subreddit, one user said the wordmark looked “fan-made,” like something built in Canva; another called it “an unsettling mix of manuscript and cursive”; a third summarized it as a “sidegrade” — or, inevitably, a “zidegrade”.

Not everyone was hostile to the new look. Some found the half-cursive design stylish and surprisingly readable, while others called it an improvement on its predecessor, and one commenter argued Instagram was simply adopting minimalist branding later than everyone else. Either way, the platform now has a refreshed identity, three updated fonts, and an unofficial new pronunciation.