Category Archives: M-Pesa

Cashless pushes around Africa

Nigeria: The Central Bank of Nigeria set a tariff of 3% for deposits and 2% for withdrawals of  more than Naira 500,000 (equivalent to ~$1,380) from individual accounts. They also set a tariff of 5% for withdrawals from corporate accounts, and 3% for deposits, over Naira 3 Million (equivalent to ~$8,280) from corporate accounts. This is in the states of Lagos, Ogun, Kano, Abia, Anambra, and Rivers States as well as the Federal Capital Territory. This is to promote cashless transactions. (Source)

Uganda: The Bank of Uganda has banned merchants from imposing surcharges for the use of electronic card payments and also the setting of minimum and maxim amounts that can be transacted on cars. In addition, they have asked banks in Uganda to harmonize tariffs that they levy on customers of banks for when they use each other’s ATM’s.

Kenya: Today is the deadline set by Kenya’s Central Bank after which the old series of the Kshs 1,000 (~$10 notes), bearing the image of the first President of Kenya, will cease to become legal  tender for transacting in the country.

Tanzania: Mobile app lender Tala suspended issuing loans in Tanzania. The company which claims to have lent over $1 billion to 4 million individuals will continue in Kenya which they say, with 3 million customers, is a critical part of their global business, and where they are piloting new financial education services. California-headquartered Tala also has customers in The Philippines, Mexico and India, and is backed by investors like PayPal, IVP, and Revolution Growth.

Zimbabwe: The Cashless push has gone awry in Zimbabwe where the Government has now banned Ecocash agents from making cash deposits and withdrawals for customers as these are now happening at values that are at variance. This has resulted in a situation where $1 in cash is worth ~$1.50 in digital money. 

KCB relaunches M-Pesa loans with zero interest options

KCB has relaunched KCB M-Pesa loans, small value short-term loan product, with zero interest option along with allowing customers to top-up to their current outstanding loans and roll over loans past the one month.

KCB M-Pesa was launched back in March 2015 in partnership with Safaricom, and they are available from the Safaricom SIM toolkit.  The re-launch came after the migration of the service on to a new platform in partnership with Huawei that will process transactions faster and which is more stable.

KCB CEO Joshua Oigara said that the bank was disbursing Kshs 7 billion worth of loans through mobile, an amount that used to be disbursed over six months at their traditional branches. He announced that the platform improved would bring three new changes to the loan product namely; automatic roll forward of loans if a customer was not able to repay in thirty days, customers could not top-up loan until they reach their credit limits(previously they had to repay an existing loan, in order to qualify for a new ones) and customers will pay zero percent (0%) loan interest if they repay loans on the same day. The zero interest loan offer runs from December 18, 2018, to 17 January 2019 and during this period, customers will be able to enjoy one interest-free loan per week as long as the loan is repaid by midnight of the same day.

Also present at the launch were CEO of Safaricom, Bob Collymore, and Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for ICT, Joe Mucheru.

Safaricom 2018 Results, Driven by M-Pesa and Data Growth.

This morning Safaricom released their March 2018 results, reporting that they had overcome a challenging year in Kenya to post record results as their shares also touched record highs.

Kenya’s largest company reported revenue of Kshs 224.5 billion (~$2.24 billion), a 10% increase shillings an EBIT of Kshs 79.3 billion, and a net income of Kshs 55 billion ($553 million). They will pay out a Kshs 44 billion ($440 million) as dividend (Kshs 1.1 per share)  to their shareholders.

As was the case the previous year, the results were driven by innovations in data, and mobile money (M-Pesa_. Mobile data revenue was Kshs 38.4 billion (up from Kshs 29.3 billion) and data usage per customer has grown to 56% to 421 MB, with more than 90% of data consumed through bundles which offered customers better value and freedom of usage.

M-pesa revenue was Kshs 62.9 billion as customers had moved from traditional M-Pesa to payments. The company has signed over 100,000 Lipa-Na-M-Pesa merchants and customers did 147 million Lipa na M-pesa transactions, an increase of 63%. Safaricom had reduced merchant fees by 50% and also made customer transactions that were smaller than Kshs  200 ($2) free of charge. In financing, Safaricom now issued 3 (micro) loans every second through partnerships with banks – M-Shwari (CBA) and KCB’s M-Pesa. Overall, M-pesa accounted for 28% of service revenue, and mobile data was 16% reducing Safaricom’s earlier reliance on voice and SMS which together were still a significant 50% of revenue.

These results were achieved in a year that Kenya had a prolonged electioneering period which slowed economic activity while credit growth was also the slowest in 14 years. But in releasing the results, Safaricom director, and former CEO, Michael Joseph cautioned that a draft industry competition study had proposals that seriously concerned Safaricom such as the introduction of price controls and regulated infrastructure sharing. The proposals, he said, would prevent Safaricom from rolling out services that their competitors could not replicate.

The results announcement also saw a surprise reappearance (via video) of Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore who took personal leave late last year to seek medical treatment. Collymore announced that he was completing the final phases of his treatment and expected to be back in Nairobi in a  few weeks once he was cleared to travel by his doctors.

Some ongoing innovations include in food security (Digi Farm and Connected Farmer) and healthcare (M-Tiba which now has 1 million users. They recently created an agri-business department that will to seek to deliver mobile-based solutions to address food security in the country. Also, the Safaricom Foundation is refreshing its strategy to address sustainable development of communities in three areas; education, health, and economic empowerment.

Going forward, Safaricom projects EBIT of Kshs 85 – 89 billion for 2019 as they look to drive shareholder value through growing M-Pesa across borders, and appropriate partnerships and in environments with the right regulations, Also from e-commerce and they recently signed payment partnerships with PayPal and the Google. 

Digital App Loans: Understanding Borrower Behavior

An Interesting conversation was started by a tweet by Francis Waithaka on the true borrowing of costs of app loans that hundreds of Kenyans take every day by making a few clicks on their phones.

It elicited a lot of comments on the cost of finance offers to Kenyans, since an interest capping law passed in 2016 that restrict banks to lend at a maximum of 14%, the lack of regulation of app loans who may be taking advance of Kenyans by charging usurious rates etc. It also led to a mention of a research report from Micro Save about the digital credit landscape in Kenya that was shared by one of the authors.

The Microsave Report (PDF) titled “Where Credit Is Due: Customer Experience of Digital Credit In Kenya”  had lots of insights. It was drawn from feedback from 1,009 farmers located in 50 villages, equally split between Central Kenya and Western Kenya, and also with an equal number of men and women in the study.

At the end of it, the report makes some recommendations to the Communications Authority of Kenya and the Central Bank of Kenya – such as to control the type of messaging sent by text to consumers, and to require app loan companies to share information and to list all defaulters, respectively.

Habits of Borrowers 

  • There is a preference for Chama’ s, SACCO’s and M-Shwari as a source of funding. App loan amounts are too small for significant investments.
  • Majority of the customers took up loans to smooth consumption, emergencies or to boost business.
  • They don’t understand terms and conditions of app loans and they don’t understand credit reference.
  • There are three types of borrowers: repayers (who pay loans on time), defaulters  (who don’t understand the consequences of being listed), and jugglers who take both traditional and app loans – but if they are financially stretched, they are more likely to repay the traditional loans.
  • Customers have learned to game the system through timely repayment of loans and juggling multiple borrowers.
  • There is no extra “PIN” required to request and withdraw an app loan and some family members have done this in secret leading the phone owner to default on a loan.
  • Digital credit usage doubled in Kenya between 2015 and 2016, with awareness and usage of digital credit by far lower in rural Kenya.
  • Digital credit, which offers privacy, is replacing shop credit and family/ friends as financiers.
  • The simplicity of the loan application procedures matters;  too much information requested or if there are too many variables that make it confusing, makes potential borrowers drop off.

Phone Types 

Download a loan app or use USSd

  • App usage is rather low – and this probably related to lower usage of smartphones as their batteries rarely last a full day as compared to cheaper feature phones that retain battery charge for several days of use.
  • Phones are mainly used for money transfer,  deposits, and withdrawals. There is little usage to get information or to browse the internet
  • 64% of respondents in the survey had a basic phone (57% in 2015). Smartphones were 14%, growing slightly and off-setting feature phones which declined slightly to 26%.
  • Loss of a phone may result in a  borrower defaulting on repayment.

Credit Reference Bureaus

  • Formal lenders require clearance from a credit reference bureau (CRB) which costs $22 (i.e Kshs 2,200) and that may exclude borrowers from formal finance. App loans don’t require this, e except that borrowers have not been black-listed.
  • One concern is there is little understanding of credit reference bureaus, and of channels for redress of any disputes.
  • Not all fintech’s report loans to credit reference bureaus.

App loan costs

  • High loan/interest charges are not a concern as they are comparable to other informal money lenders

At the time of the survey, M-Shwari issued 62 million loans (worth Kshs 1.3 trillion), while Equitel and KCB about 4 million each. In comments to accompany the release of their 2017 bank results last month, KCB had 13 million mobile customers, Equity Bank has 12.1 million, while a  CBA statement noted that the bank also serves 33 million mobile savings & loans customers, in East Africa, in partnership with mobile money operators.

PayPal in Kenya: Part II M-Pesa Links Up

PayPal’s reach in Kenya has now been extended to M-Pesa wallets, allowing users of the service to get payments directly to their mobile phones, thanks to a partnership between Safaricom, PayPal and TransferTo.

Under the new service, qualified M-Pesa customers can link their PayPal accounts to M-Pesa wallets, using an “M-PESA PayPal portal”  that will enable them to buy goods and services using M-Pesa to top up their PayPal accounts and this is expected to benefit international ecommerce and remittances. They can also withdraw cash at 148,000 M-Pesa agents around Kenya. M-Pesa has 27.8 million active customers while Nasdaq-listed PayPal has 227 million and is available in 200 markets, allowing merchants to receive funds in more than 100 currencies and withdraw funds in 56 currencies. TransferTo is a Singapore-based cross-border mobile payments enabler. 

PayPal has officially been in Kenya for almost five years exclusively with Equity Bank, dating back to 2013 when Equity and FNB were the only authorized Paypal partners in Africa. Equity is still the only bank in Kenya that PayPal users can withdraw with and during 2017, Equity reduced the PayPal withdrawal time from 8 days to 3 days. Last week Equity reviewed the cost of getting paid using PayPal to as little as 1% for withdrawal amounts that are over $5,000 (~Kshs 500,000), versus 1.5% for payments below $500 (~Kshs 50,000).

At the Equity Bank 2017 results announcement last month, CEO James Mwangi confirmed that usage of PayPal by Equity Bank customers had overtaken traditional remittance channels of Western Union and MoneyGram. PayPal was used for payments worth Kshs 6.2 billion in 2017 by Equity customers, up from Kshs 3.6 billion the year before, and accounted for 21% of the Kshs 30.2 billion worth of payments with another new service provider, Wave accounting for 52% of the value of transfers.