Safaricom and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) Group have struck a deal that will make the banking institution a trust account holder for the telco’s M-PESA service. The partnership will see KCB control funds for the operator, meaning it stands to benefit from competitive deposits.
It should be remembered that this is not the first partnership KCB and Safaricom have agreed upon thanks to the existence of KCB M-PESA that works just like M-Shwari where users can save and access loans. Notably, the deal makes KCB a second trust account after the CBA Group.
Based on the latest stats done by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) for the third quarter of the FY 2016/17 (Jan to March), Safaricom has 22,031,599 mobile money subscriptions and 135,544 M-PESA agents. The platform’s value of transactions for that period stood at KES 890,676,274,606. At the same time, Safaricom brought in KES 55.1 billion by March 2017 as revenue from Mpesa.
From these numbers, it is apparent that M-PESA keeps growing, and to keep that performance on an upward trend, the partnership will make it possible for major Safaricom agents to purchase float and sell to other KCB and M-PESA agents.
“KCB has a wide branch coverage nationwide and hence our partners will have easy access to deposit funds in their organization hence improving business efficiency. Being the leading M-Pesa super agency, KCB already has an established relationship with M-Pesa agents nationwide. They will provide a good avenue for business continuity planning for Safaricom,” Safaricom said in a notice to its staff.
More numbers show that Safaricom had deposits and withdrawals amounting to KES 1.84 trillion and KES 1.6 trillion by the end of the third quarter, respectively. Additional services such as the aforementioned KCB M-PESA and M-Shwari, airtime purchase as well as Lipa na M-PESA accounted for KES 1.8 trillion.
KCB will augment Safaricom’s efforts in serving partners who transact cash that surpasses the base limit, with the primary goal of setting up one super-agent for every 10 km.
