Airtel Money subscribers will soon enjoy full interoperability with M-Pesa users as the company prepares to open its cash tills and paybills to transactions from the rival platform starting in March.
This move will close a gap that has existed since 2022, when Airtel Money users were allowed to pay into Safaricom’s corresponding payment platforms, but not vice versa.
Airtel Money Managing Director Anne Kinuthia-Otieno confirmed that plans to implement payment interoperability are at an advanced stage and will be finalized within the current quarter.
“Currently, our customers can pay into the competition paybills or tills, and the reverse is now going to happen, where any customer from the competition can also pay to any of the Airtel Money paybills and tills,” she said in an interview.
Interoperability allows different payment systems to clear and settle financial transactions seamlessly. The move is expected to create a more inclusive financial ecosystem in Kenya.
“By this quarter, we’ll now be able to have seamless interoperability on payments. We are getting a lot of support from our regulator and competition to be able to open this up,” Kinuthia said.
In an article published by Business Daily, it is said that the initiative will remove a significant barrier that currently prevents M-Pesa subscribers from making payments through Airtel Money’s mobile payment platforms. This development comes nearly three years after Safaricom launched a similar system in April 2022, allowing M-Pesa to receive payments from rival platforms through its Lipa na M-Pesa channels.
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has been advocating for seamless transactions across competing mobile money services to enhance financial inclusivity. The first step towards interoperability was taken in 2018 when individual consumer transfers between Airtel Money and M-Pesa were enabled.
The upcoming move will mark the completion of the second phase of a three-part CBK-led national payments strategy aimed at telco operators.
