Tag Archive for 'm-pesa'

Equity Bank’s Credit Card Processing Upgrade.

Published on January 21, 2010 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Largest bank by customer base gains capacity to handle 180,000 transactions per minute.

Nairobi, KENYA, 21 January, 2010

Equity Bank has fully migrated to the Card Management System from OpenWay Group of Belgium. The Way 4 System which is an online Card Management system is designed for multi-institution and multi-currency transaction processing, and has the ability to handle over 60 million cards with speed performance of 180,000 transactions per minute.

The system which received the highest possible rating by Gartner – the top organization for rating software in the world- also provides support for non-card based transactions over multiple self service channels, and also transacts different currencies.

Already in operation, the new system will increase efficiency and eliminate the amount of time it takes to transact business in all Equity Bank Point of Sales outlets and ATMs in the region.

Speaking during the signing of the partnership between OpenWay Group and Equity Bank, Dr. James Mwangi said the system has capacity to host the combined network of Equity Bank branches, subsidiaries and other banks at reduced costs occasioned by the automated workflows provided by the Group.

‘The new system not only gives Equity Bank a niche in terms of competitiveness in cutting edge technology and card management, but allows speedy and efficient transaction process in real time, and for all currencies,’ Dr Mwangi said.

Dr Mwangi said  the new migration had positioned Equity as the first banking  institution in the region capable of handling regional inter switching connectivity with ease, noting that the cost reduction and increased volume of channel transactions  would translate  into higher profit margins.

He said the new switch system would come in handy with the recently launched partnership between Equity Bank and Safaricom which will allow M-Pesa account holders to withdraw money from the banks 550 Automated Teller Machines countrywide.

Incidents of fraud in card transactions in the country would also be reduced drastically with the implementation of the EMV ( Eurocard, Mastercard, VISA) cards, Dr Mwangi said.

OpenWay Managing Director Wim Pardon said the robust Way 4 switching and back office system has also enabled Equity Bank seamlessly roll out in the region. The system has a built in online monitoring capability and has been used for issuing debit and credit cards.

Mr Pardon who was accompanied by the Account Relationship Manager Georges Michel said that Way 4 is looking at this partnership as an ideal opportunity into the African Market.

The system is equipped with a card association readiness for Visa, Mastercard, JCB , CUP among others. This means all other banks’ VISA cards can now be used on Equity Bank Point of Sale terminals in leading supermarkets and other retail outlets countrywide.

The investment was prompted by need for a regional switching system for the bank and the challenge of coupling system stability with higher capacity and faster transaction speeds.

Equity Bank partners with Safaricom for M-Pesa.

Published on January 16, 2010 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

In the news this week, Equity Bank and Safaricom have announced a strategic partnership for M-Pesa. Basically, any of M-Pesa’s 8 million subscribers in Kenya will now be able to make card-less drawings from any of Equity Bank’s 550 automated teller machines (ATMs) throughout Kenya. This is not the first time that Safaricom has made such strategic partnership since it already does the same with PesaPoint’s nationwide ATM network in Kenya.

Equity Bank is clearly positioning itself to become the preferred bank for mobile money services since it announced last month that it had partnered with the YU network to act as an agent for its extensive branch network in Kenya (this was covered in a post on this blog as well). As of this writing, Equity Bank has the largest number of account holders in Kenya with over 4 million. The latest partnership move would enable Equity Bank to start acquiring more account holders as well as selling additional services.

KDN’s Bandwidth Wagon and KCB’s Mobile Wallet.

Published on October 23, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The last couple of weeks have been quite busy with travel and work so I’ve literally had no time to blog (shame!). On the travel side, I was in South Africa’s Johannesburg City last week for the inaugural Mobile Web Africa Conference which was a real eye opener for me (I’ll be blogging more on this event over the weekend for a full round up of what was interesting there).

So, just to get the weekend going, there are two really interesting developments in Kenya’s ICT landscape this week. The first is that Kenya Data Networks or KDN as they are popularly known have announced this week that they are quadrupling bandwidth to their clients for the same price. This is really interesting since a couple of months back both AccessKenya and UUNET had doubled bandwidth to their clients for the same price but KDN as effectively gone a step further and they are bound to unleash a bandwidth war of sorts. At the end of the day, what remains to be seen is if the other players in the marketplace follow suit and we can finally have the benefit of much faster bandwidth at lower prices since the SEACOM and TEAMS undersea cables went live.

In other news this week and what is clearly a counter move to Safaricom’s M-Pesa and Zain’s Zap money transfer services, Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) is set to launch a mobile wallet service early next year. The service from KCB is interesting in that one does NOT have to be a KCB customer to access the service and will only require a mobile phone on any of the Kenyan mobile networks (initially). The other interesting aspect of the KCB mobile wallet is that it will be available not only in Kenya but also in all the countries where KCB currently operates including Tanzania, Uganda and Southern Sudan.

The KCB mobile wallet will also interface with Safaricom’s M-Pesa service meaning that users will be able to top-up or withdraw funds from their M-Pesa accounts to their KCB mobile wallets and vice versa. Finally, the limit for money transfers using the KCB mobile wallet will be Kes. 100,000.00 which is higher than the limits currently offered on Zain’s Zap and Safaricom’s M-Pesa services. In a nutshell, KCB is proving that its not only the largest bank in Kenya but possibly the most innovative too by fully embracing the mobile money channel instead of fighting it!

Zain Kenya launches Zap International Mobile Money Transfers.

Published on September 23, 2009 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I am following a couple of threads on some Kenyan mailing lists and apparently Zain Kenya may just have upped the ante with regards to International mobile money transfers on its Zap service. The news I’m picking up is that Zap users in Kenya can now receive International money transfers directly on their mobile phones. The interesting bit is that the sender of the funds does this directly from their bank account to the Zap user who is subscribed to the service. This new Zap offering from Zain Kenya is bound to shake up the multi-billion shilling International remittances business which has been largely dominated by Western Union for the better part of a decade. However, Safaricom, the market leader for mobile money transfers in Kenya through its M-PESA offering will probably respond aggressively to this initiative, using its sheer brawn of 14+ million mobile subscribers.

In other interesting news over the last week or so, both NIC Bank and KCB have launched their own mobile banking services. This is in no way massively innovative since  Barclays Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and many other Banks have also launched mobile banking offerings in past 6 months or so. However, one of the unique features that both KCB’s KCB Connect and NIC Bank’s Mobile Banking services have is the ability to draw funds from your account and deposit them into your Safaricom M-Pesa account. This will undoubtedly create an interesting customer value proposition that realizes convenience, efficiency and effectiveness for them. It also means that rather than seeing M-Pesa as threat, KCB and NIC Bank are using it as a way of generating additional transactions with their customers, leading to more billings.

Safaricom’s CEO Michael Joseph speaks at the Kenya Diaspora Conference 2009.

Published on August 25, 2009 in random. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Just picked-up this video of highlights on Safaricom’s CEO Michael Joseph speaking at the Kenya Diaspora Conference in Atlanta, USA. Credits for the same go to Mshale.com, an online Kenyan Diaspora Magazine.

Safaricom’s M-Pesa outage and Zain’s Zap game changer?

Published on August 12, 2009 in random. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Over the last week or so, many of Safaricom’s M-Pesa subscribers we’re affected by service failures that meant that they could nether send or receive payments. For many M-Pesa users, its not just a money transfer service, its a lifeline that they need just to function financially. Many un-banked M-Pesa users use the service as a form of a bank account and any failure in its reliability seriously compromises them. So, the jury is out as to whether M-Pesa has finally reached a breaking point after its exponential growth over the last few years.

Another interesting development on the mobile money transfer market in Kenya that recently came to my attention is that Zain’s Zap users can send money to other mobile networks. Now, at first, I thought that this surely can’t be possible. But, basically, a Zain Zap user can send you money on your Non-Zain mobile number and then you present the details of the transfer to a Zain Zap Agent. Its as simple as that! Could Zap be a game changer in Kenya’s mobile money transfers business? This remains to be seen!

Orange Kenya to launch mobile money transfer service.

Published on June 29, 2009 in random. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

In the news today, Orange Kenya plans to launch a mobile money transfer service to compete with Safaricom’s M-Pesa and Zain Kenya’s Zap services. Specific details as to when Orange Kenya plans to launch its mobile money transfer service have not been provided  as yet. Mobile money transfers in Kenya are just one of the ways that the mobile network operators are using to lock-in subscribers for the long haul as their Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) has dropped significantly due to tariff wars over the last couple of years.

KWFT testing microloan payments via mobile phone.

Published on June 22, 2009 in random. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , .

In today’s edition of the Business Daily, its been reported that the Kenya Womens Finance Trust (KWFT) is currently testing micro loan repayments from its loanees using Safaricom’s hugely popular M-Pesa service on mobile phones. The pilot, if viable, will be extended to most of KWFT’s branches in coming month’s. The loan repayment pilot is being done to improve the KWFT operational efficiencies, effectiveness and convenience. Its becoming more and more apparent in Kenya that the mobile phone is far more than just a communication device, its becoming a virtual bank account and end-to-end financial service for many of us! For the full story, go here>

Western Union lowers money transfer charges to just 2% in Kenya.

Published on June 9, 2009 in random. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

In an obvious move to stay relevant (and competitive) against the growing dominance of mobile payment services in the form of Safaricom’s M-Pesa and Zain’s Zap, Western Union has massively lowered its money transfer rates within Kenya to just 2% of the value being transferred. The new rate applies to transfers from as little as Kes. 100.00 to a maximum of Kes. 500,000.00.

The reduced rate which became active on the 1st June 2009 is applicable to over 500 Western Union agent locations throughout Kenya. What remains to be see is if users on Zain’s Zap and Safaricom’s M-Pesa will even consider using Western Union since the convenience and ubiquity of mobile-based transactions in Kenya make for a very compelling value proposition. More details can be found at Western Union’s Kenya web site here >

Safaricom’s data revenue grew 83% in the last year.

Published on June 1, 2009 in telecoms. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

In a story published in this Sunday’s edition of the East African Standard, almost a decade after it heralded a virtual mobile revolution in Kenya, catapulting it into the region’s most profitable company, Safaricom is harnessing new areas to underpin future growth.

The shift from over-reliance on voice as the firm’s bread and butter into new supplementary frontiers like data and Value Added Services is discernible in recent animation at the firm, as it seeks to protect its top-line revenue, which grew 15 per cent to Sh70.48 billion during the financial year to March 31, this year.

It is telling that during the same period, whose results were released to the market recently, data revenue grew by an impressive 83 per cent. In tandem, revenue linked to this stream was a material 12.9 per cent, which translates into some Sh9.09 billion out of the global revenue take. More >