NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

EQUITY Bank plans to officially launch its mobile money platform Equitel – the trading brand of its telecoms subsidiary Finserve Africa – next quarter, chief executive James Mwangi said yesterday.

The bank was on September 22 given a conditional approval to offer mobile phone services including money transfer on the controversial technology that allows overlay of ultra-thin SIMs on top of the ordinary ones.

It has however been issuing its customers with ordinary cards in the banking halls despite its supplier, Taiwan’s Taisy’s Technologies, saying in a statement on October 7 that it had delivered the first batch.

Mwangi said a “specially assembled” technical team including experts from Norway and Japan was putting final touches on the technology’s capacity and security of the locally untested technology before official launch.

“What our technical team is doing is debunking all the myths and falsehoods that have been spread about the technology,” he said. “We will definitely be rolling out in the next quarter (January to March 2015)”