Airtel Kenya allows Post Pay Customers to pay Via M-Pesa PayBill

0

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) recently released  Q1 sector statistics report for the financial year 2015/2016 (July-September 2015). In the report, the CA highlights the continued growth of the ICT sector in various facets including mobile telephony. In this segment, mobile subscribers hit 37.8 Million subscribers. Of the mobile operators, Safaricom leads with 25.1 Million subscribers representing 66.3% market share followed by Airtel with 7.2 Million customers. Others include Equitel with  1,085,869 and Orange 4.4 Million subscribers.

Most of the customers locked onto these network either on a post pay or prepaid tariff. Safaricom has 23.3 Million customers on pre-paid tariff and 833,818 on post pay tariff. Airtel has 7.1 Million on prepay and 146,873 on post pay.  Equitel has all its customers on pre-paid  while Orange has 11,264 customers on post pay of its 4.4 million customers.

Airtel has now offered its 146,873 post pay customers an M-Pesa pay bill number through which they can settle their bills. M-Pesa is a mobile money transfer service owned by Airtel’s rival Safaricom. Through M-Pesa, one can settle their bills via Lipa na M-Pesa merchant service. Airtel Post Pay customers will pay for the service through pay bill number 220220 and  Account number is AIRP[postpaid number] eg. AIRP0733123456. This move is particularly interesting as Airtel is currently in a tussle with Safaricom over  mobile money agent sharing agreements.

Based off the CA report, Safaricom has 22 Million registered users with 94,000 active agents followed by Airtel Money with 3 Million registered users and 9.986 active agents. MobiKash follows with 1.7 Million registered users and 16,162 active agents. Equitel follows with 1,085,000 registered users followed by Tangaza Money with 503,000 users with Orange Money at the tail end with 191,000 users.

Update: We have since confirmed that the PayBill is for PesaPal payments. This means Airtel PostPay customers can settle their bills via PesaPal.

Previous articleICT CS Joe Mucheru offloads Stakes in ICT firms to Avoid Conflict of Interest
Next articleSamsung Already Testing Successor to Galaxy J5
Eric writes on business, govt policy and enterprise tech.