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M-Pesa users can now send money or pay for goods and services
when they have insufficient balance in their accounts after Safaricom
rolled out Fuliza to all subscribers on its mobile money platform over
the weekend.
Rollout of the overdraft facility to the
firm’s 24. 2 million M-Pesa users follows a successful pilot programme
in November last year.
It also comes at a time when
M-Pesa and data services helped buoy its half-year net earnings by 20.22
per cent to Ksh31.5 billion ($309.16 million), underlining the importance of capitalising on its mobile money services to grow revenues.
With
Fuliza, M-pesa users can now get overdrafts of as high as Ksh50,000
($500) depending on the value of their transactions through the service
that was rolled out on Saturday.
The telco launched the overdraft facility in partnership with lenders Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) and Commercial Bank of Africa
(CBA). It attracts a daily charge of 0.5 per cent of the borrowing as a
top-up to enable M-Pesa customers complete transactions.
The
two banks will use algorithms based on transactions such as M-Pesa
deals and airtime use to set a limit on amount which can be accessed by
individual customers.
Safaricom had 24,206,341 active subscriptions on its M-Pesa
platform at the end of September, according to industry data by the
Communications Authority of Kenya.
Fuliza is the latest innovation by the firm as it seeks to leverage on M-Pesa to generate additional revenue for Safaricom.
Financial Fortune is a digital financial news website and print business magazine published in Nairobi by Fortune & Transit Publishers Ltd and covers the financial services sector through news, views and extensive people coverage since 2018.