PesaLink is no threat to M-Pesa, says Safaricom

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

The planned launch of interbank mobile money transfer system next month by commercial banks will not slow down revenues from Safaricom’s M-Pesa, chief executive Bob Collymore has said. He says a significant number of close to 25 million customers on its money-minting machine, M-Pesa, will not be swayed by PesaLink because they do not hold conventional bank accounts.

“The revenues that are generated from M-Pesa to bank transactions are not a lot. Most of the M-Pesa revenues come from person-to-person transactions. Then again very few Kenyans have bank accounts compared to over 24 million active M-Pesa accounts,” he said. Collymore spoke on the sidelines of a media briefing on the Africa Payments Innovation Summit next month.

The meeting is sponsored by the global news organisation Financial Times, which hopes to bring together 250 business leaders in Nairobi on March 29 to discuss challenges and opportunities in mobile payments.

Safaricom pioneered the era of seamless mobile money payments with the launch of M-Pesa in 2007.

M-Pesa has maintained a decade-long dominance in the mobile money market and has consistently evolved to offer mobile lending, savings and payments. However, commercial banks hope to ride on below-market rates to drive subscriptions on their mobile money transfer system which goes live next month.

Source: The Star (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Technology
Tags
digital payments, financial inclusion