Safaricom is rolling up its sleeve for real competition on it revolutionary mobile money service, M-Pesa, now. The mobile services provider has today announced a major tariff review of its M-PESA service, the first since the service was launched in 2007.
M-PESA customers will now be able to send and receive amounts as low as Sh10 with effect from today, against a previous limit of Sh50, with charges for transfers within this band pegged at Sh3. M-PESA customers can also now make micro-payments from as low as Sh10 to Sh49 per month.
Again, Safaricom has lowered the transaction fees for its Sh101 and Sh500 value band.The charge for this band, which accounts for over a quarter of all the transactions on the M-PESA platform, has been reduced from Sh30 to Sh25, in a move aimed at encouraring more transactions within the band. In a statement, Safaricom has indicated that it does now wish to punish Kenyans for transacting less.
Citing customer feedback, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore said:
“It was very clear to us when we undertook this tariff review that we were in a unique position to extend the benefits of financial inclusion to more Kenyans, partilcualry those in lower income groups who rely very heavily on our service.” He added, “We are particulary concious of the fact that about 7 in 10 adults in Kenya now have access to some form of mobile money service and as the pioneers in this space,s we have a specific role to ensure that our service remains affordable to everyone.”
The M-PESA tariff review also sees the introduction of 11 new tariff bands in a bid to rationalise the previous disparities between transaction amounts and charges levied for the same.
Commenting on this revision, Mr Collymore stated,
“The good news is that we have introduced lower charges for smaller transactions but at the same time we have had to increase the charges levied on the bigger amounts being transferred. This is motivated, in large part, by the need to give greater incentives to our growing agent network to embrace higher value transactions, while improving overall efficiency for our customers, particlarly float availability.”
You can check the whole updated M-Pesa tariff here http://bit.ly/wbDwQk
Email your news TIPS to Editor@Kahawatungu.com — this is our only official communication channel
