This archive report was first published on 25 June 2020.
On June 24, 2020, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) announced that it would extend the waiver on mobile money transaction fees under Sh1,000 for another six months, a move that could see Safaricom lose up to Sh15.3 billion.
The banking sector regulator said that the free service aimed at cutting down on the handling of cash and the attendant risk of Covid-19 being transmitted from person to person will run to the end of December.
According to CBK, the free service has increased low-value mobile phone transactions, which account for 80 percent of all mobile money transfers.
“CBK has determined that the wallet and transactions limit…will remain in place from July 1 until December 31, 2020,” the regulator said in a statement.
“More than 1.6 million additional customers are now using mobile money channels. However, business-related transactions have declined marginally,” added the CBK.
Earlier data from the regulator showed that the daily average mobile phone money transactions of less than Sh1,000 grew by 83 percent to Sh1.98 billion daily between April 20 and May 10 when compared to the days before March 16.
However, the growth was counterbalanced by the decline in mobile transactions of more than Sh1,000, which dropped 18.4 percent to Sh5.6 billion daily in a period when most companies have cut down their activities, shed jobs and placed workers on unpaid leave in response to the pandemic.
Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) figures show that Safaricom via M-Pesa controlled 99.9 percent of the cash transfers in the quarter to December.
