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

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

It’s been reported that the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) has pushed through an order compelling Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile operator, to share its mobile money transfer agents with the other mobile networks.

This regulatory intercede in the Kenyan mobile money space is similar to what we noticed earlier this year in the Zimbabwean mobile money landscape following the local mobile money agent wars.

When Telecel, the country’s second largest mobile operator, launched its own mobile money service telecash, it alleged that the market leader EcoCash, a product of its main rival Econet, was sabotaging any other operator’s access to mobile money agents.