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By Steve Umidha
Kenyans moved over Sh1.1trillion via Pay bill and Buy Good till numbers in three months to December last year, nearly a third of the country’s estimated GDP, helped by relief measures on mobile phone payments to help to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Latest quarterly report by Communications Authority (CA) shows that the value of transfers across pay bill and till numbers (total value of deposits) grew significantly by 24 per cent from Sh888, 107,405,936 in September 2020 to Sh 1,101,141,086,262 in December last year.
The mobile payment models are popular among Kenyans due to their conveniences making payments for purchases of goods and services as well as payments on utility bills such as electricity tokens, parking fees among others which also separate user’s personal mobile payments from business payments.
The Second quarter sector statistics report for the financial year 2020/2021 covering the quarter October-to December 2020 further shows that the number of active registered mobile money subscriptions stood at 32.5 million, while number of active mobile money agents stood at 264,390 during the period under review.
Mobile money payments among Kenyans has relatively remained a popular means of payments but its usage was heighted last year due to the pandemic as the Health Ministry and medical experts warned that handing of physical cash pose serious risk of the virus spread – instead encouraging use of alternative means of transactions such an internet and mobile money transfers.
Indeed, figures by the Central bank of Kenya (CBK) show that Kenyans moved Sh5.21 trillion through their phones last with the total transactions rising by 20 percent from Sh4.34 trillion the previous year.
This means that an average of Sh14.27 billion was transacted on mobile phones daily between January and December 2020 — some Sh2.81 billion higher than the Sh11.91 billion daily average in 2019.
Mobile money agents of Safaricom’s M-Pesa, Airtel Money and Telkom’s Tkash handled Sh3.98 trillion in 2018— underling the impressive growth in the value of transactions in the last three years.
Those industry figures further indicate that as at the end of the 2020, more and more services had moved to online, which has led to increase in consumption of data and internet with Safaricom and Jamii Telecommunication proving to be the most preferred brands for such services.
During the second quarter of FY 2020/21, the total data/Internet subscriptions amounted to 44.4 million subscriptions. These comprised 43.8 million wireless subscriptions and 572,982 fixed (wired) subscriptions.