Mobile money interoperability in Kenya is coming in the next three months. According to Business Daily, an agreement was reached on Thursday (4th May, 2017) that would see mobile money users make cross-network transfers at no additional cost in Kenya.
“It means that someone on Airtel Money is able to send money to somebody on M-Pesa and the money goes straight to the recipient’s wallet and can be used for transactions,” said ICT Secretary, Joe Mucheru.
The call for interoperability has been echoed among all other mobile money services and it is good news that Safaricom has finally given in. This follows the drama that ensued when a report recommended that M-Pesa be broken off from Safaricom to reduce the company’s dominance, a recommendation that the company did not like that much.
Business Daily reports that the agreement between the operators may be seen as a way of preempting the enforcement of regulator-led interoperability. Mr. Joe Mucheru also said “the regulator can come in later but not necessarily be the one forcing interoperability. Our intention is to have the market come together and agree so that they can all grow.”
The service will undergo a six-month trial period after which we could see the service roll-out to the general public. This could be the break Telcos such as Airtel and Telkom Kenya have been waiting for.
Here’s to hoping that everything goes well, for the sake of us all.
This is great to hear. After all, it is Safaricom that is going to benefit and I don’t see why they were opposed to such as move before.
Most people have a Safaricom line for M-Pesa, Airtel for the rest. With interoperability, Safaricom might not seem so actractive any more.
More money transfers are going to originate from Safaricom to other networks. So it is a win for Safaricom
Like with Mobile Number portability, one network will frustrate the efforts and stop users from using this service altogether.
Wow! Lets hope the deal will be successful
[…] that surpass those in some of the developed countries. At the same time, Kenya is still considering interoperability for mobile money […]
[…] in May 2017, we reported that mobile money interoperability would be available to consumers within three months but that did not happen. Months later and finally we have something substantial. Joe Mucheru, ICT […]
[…] their banking apps and USSD services and, not to be caught out, the mobile network operators reached an agreement that mobile users should no longer experience differences in costs while moving money across […]
Comments are closed.