Africa’s leading hotel booking platform Jovago.com has announced the incorporation of Tigo Pesa, one of the region’s major mobile money transfer services. This partnership gives the customer yet another option for efficiency on top of the available card payments and pay-on-arrival model. “Africa is definitely moving on to the digital world, as part of this
The Central Bank of Kenya conducts a survey on remittance inflows every month through the formal channels that include commercial banks and other authorized international remittance service providers in Kenya. In 2014, remittance inflows to Kenya increased by USD 137 million or (11 percent) to USD 1,428.5 million compared with USD 1,290.6 million in 2013.
The KCB Group has emerged the winner for Africa’s premier social and digital media awards, cementing its position as the region’s leading financial institution. The largest Bank in the East African region by asset base and branch network was named the winner for “Best Use of Social Media by a Financial Institution in Africa” during
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has granted authority to the Mauritius Commercial Bank to open a Representative Office in Kenya. The authority was granted pursuant to Section 43 of the Banking Act. Representative Offices of foreign banks only serve as marketing and liaison offices for their foreign parent banks and affiliates and are not
Safaricom has announced an instant rewards system to incentivize customers who pay for fuel using Lipa Na M-PESA. With over 134,000 motorists having already received free talk time on the Safaricom network for every purchase of fuel worth Sh500 or more, the consumer incentive plan highlights the growing use of M-PESA as a payment channel.
Kenya and East Africa are actively transitioning to cashless payments systems. East Africa’s economies are largely cash based informal economies with its associated costs. Challenges in aggregating national transaction data, consumer spending patterns, tax administration – there is really no shortage of incentives. “With no means to track sales, little data is available, and channels
Kenyan mobile app company Mobile Matrix has released PesaCalc, a free Android app that helps mobile money users in Kenya save money when using mobile money services. “PesaCalc helps Kenya’s mobile money users prepare exactly the right amount to send with the options of sending to registered and unregistered users, as well as including the
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has approved a € 50 million credit line to Equity Bank to facilitate onward lending to Small and Medium Enterprises across the region. Speaking at the signing of the facility, Equity Bank Group Managing Director Dr. James Mwangi said, the funds received will be commercially advanced to eligible SME players
Safaricom has announced the launch of M-Ledger, an Android based application that provides subscribers on the company’s network with a simple and easy to use financial journal to track and monitor their M-PESA transactions. Developed in partnership with a local start-up Dynamic Data Systems, the partnership is the first in an anticipated series of partnerships
Recently I’ve seen a number of articles saying the same thing we’ve been experiencing at Kopo Kopo in the past couple of years. Mobile payment acceptance alone is not enough. By that, I mean that most merchants that we work with in East Africa have adopted digitized payments somewhat reluctantly, and only when they saw
