Chase Bank and Safaricom have announced a partnership targeting businesses by aggregating banking services and delivering them on a mobile platform. Through the partnership Chase Bank will launch the Mobile2Bank solution based off Safaricom’s Business to Business platform. The service will further allow for digitization of M-Pesa services on its platform.
The Mobile2Bank service offers four menu sercices including Easy Collect, Pay Anyone, Instant Credit and Agency Float Buying. To initiate the process, a customer is given a Lipa na M-Pesa paybill number and then acquiring a PIN number from the Chase Mfukoni Platform. A bank account is then opened for the business and they can use the services.
With Collect, customers are able to get real time settlement on till numbers from Lipa na M-pesa. This applies for both pay bill as well as buy goods and services. The funds are then credited to their bank account, where they can immediately access them at no cost. There is also no limit on the amount of cash a user can settle on a given day. With Pay, a business is able to settle its accounts be it a paybill number, till number and also any bank account in Kenya via M-Pesa. The service extends beyond by office hours and weekends and eliminates the needs for cheque books or RGTS. The charges for using the service are set between Kshs. 50 – Kshs. 250.
The other service Instant credit, checks a business’ turnaround and qualifies them for Biashara loan. The loans offered through this service are mainly for working capital, trade finance as well as agency float. The loan limits using this service is set at Kshs. 3 Million. The final service, agency float buying targets M-Pesa agency services by digitizing the process of float acquisition. This service targets the more than 20,000 M-Pesa agents plugged onto Chase Bank by offering accessible float at no cost. The float will be accessible from their accounts or from the Biashara loan services. Chase Bank is targeting the more than 1 Million businesses in Nairobi with these services.
