Category Archives: Safaricom

Travel with Safaricom

Safaricom has hooked up with MTN in Uganda (and Vodacom in Tanzania to combat Celtel’s East African no roaming package) to enable their customers to use their phones kama kawaida in East Africa as well and the service works great.

With MTN you even have get to enjoy their cool location prompt that tells you where you are with your phone e.g. Entebbe avenue, constitution street, Bumbu, Luwum street, Speke, etc. that scared safaricom customers one day in 2006.

Only problem with Safaricom is that their cards are very difficult to find and sold at very few locations. Only MTN stores sell them in Kampala and they are making a killing. A 500-shilling card goes for 16,300 shillings at about a 30% mark-up, while a 100-shilling card is priced over by about 36%. Still it’s worth the convenience of having affordable access to your contacts and messages.

Safaricom blinks & the Nairobi barcamp

Saasa for life
Safaricom has extended its’ Saasa tariff indefinitely (was due to expire on March 31) which has much cheaper calls and SMS’s from 2- 8 PM.

Celtel has come up with some much cheaper rates than Safaricom and many people (myself included) had been waiting to see what Safaricom would do to reign in customers considering a migration.

But for now, my priority has changed to searching for a wireless communication provider. At the Barcamp – the audience was asked how many had internet access at home – with only a fractional number saying ‘yes’ – because the costs are high. Next stop for me is to decide between Flashcom, Popote, Telkom Wireless, Celtel, KDN (Butterfly), Wananchi or Safaricom on a connection for a laptop. Another interesting option I read about but one which has to be discussed with the neighbors.

Barcamp
This was a great afternoon of interesting talks (interrupted by the Arsenal Liverpool game in between).

A notable point of discussion was the apparent disconnect between the business sector and the academia. With so many executives are taking parallel degree programmes on campus one would think they’d be an easy leap in mentoring and business incubation – but, no. A curious footnote was that audit/accounting firms like to hire engineering graduates (because of the analytical way they think) and many engineering students are disillusioned about their future prospects – something that will hopefully be corrected by an ongoing curriculum review.

Others;
– Most interesting was how (Edit University of Nairobi) JKUAT students created a local area network (was also done at Moi University)
– Proposal to have another Barcamp for content
– Stockskenya (by network associates) with popular bulletin boards and fantasy trading game, with plans to enable online trading

Real estate investment
Bandari villas in Bombolulu (Mombasa) will be completed later this year. The 105 maisonettes and 56 apartments are being put up by the pension fund of the Kenya Ports Authority and are located 6 km from Mombasa and 1.5 km off the Mombasa Malindi highway

The houses are being marketed at local investors and Kenyan in the Diaspora and will be sold by Lloyd Masika agents [e-mail bombolulu@lloydmasika.co.ke] at between 3.5 and 5 million shillings ($50,000 – 71,000)

More:
– This appears to be another write-up of the houses and write up
– More on the cheqeured past of the KPA pension scheme.
– An update of real estate investments from the Diaspora

Jobs
AY&R Group. Account directors, account managers, advertising creative teams, secretaries, graphic designers, graduate trainees, management accountant. Apply to AY&Rgroup_Info@ke.yr.com by 4/4
Brookside Dairies: country managers (Uganda and Tanzania), Sales Managers, chief accountant (Tz & Ug), accountants, sales supervisors, salesmen, merchandisers. Apply to hrm@brooksidedairies.co.ke by 15/4
Commercial Bank of Africa. Compliance unit manager, property manager, administration manager, management accountant, product development manager (personal banking), business development & projects manager (IT), Treasury sales. Apply to jobs@cba.co.ke by 16/4
Africa Regional HR manager at Crown Agents. Apply to jobscs@ke.crownagents.com by 13/4
CEO at East African Grantmakers Association. Apply to info@eaag.org by 23/4
Graduate trainees at East African Standard
Accountant at Kemri/CDC. Apply to recruitment@ke.cdc.gov by 13/4
K-Rep: branch managers, business development officers, bank clerks, system administrator, database administrator. Apply to chief HRO 25363-00100 by 13/4
KWAL: application systems supervisor, systems administrator by 12/4
Various jobs at Virgin Atlantic Nairobi. D/L is 6/4
World Vision – Sudan: internal auditor, ICT specialist (infrastructure), IT specialist (system administration). Apply to recruitmentsdn@wvi.org

Money Transfer within Kenya – Part II

Part I has come to pass with Safaricom’s new M-Pesa service enabling money transfer via cell phone.

Mzansi Kenya: The new technology does not pose a threat to banks as it operates outside banking circles. What banks should look out for is a populist attempt introduce mzansi style banking as they continue to report super profits year after year which are unfairly attributed to excessive fees they levy on their customers.

Visa, watch out: The next group to watch out for what’s happening at Safaricom should be Visa and other credit card manufactures in Africa. Cell phone airtime is virtual money – which is what debit and credit cards are – enabling customers and merchants to exchange virtual payments settled days later – at a substantial fee to both parties.

With cell phones, this is already happening but it’s just not formalized. The Option – Safaricom’s free magazine publication has a letter to the editor this month from Joe Nickson of Kerugoya (central Kenya) who paid his fare in a matatu (bus) by transferring 50 shillings airtime to the conductor’s phone and he received 30 shillings actual cash as change.

Airtime offers many more possibilities – 7 million cell phone (including more post-paid cell phone customers) vs. 100, 000 credit card users in Africa. Alongside his credit card terminal, a merchant can have a terminal with a dedicated cell phone line to receive virtual payments of airtime from Safaricom users making small purchases. At the end of the day, he’ll be able to check his virtual balance – and either re-sell the airtime to customers or use it to purchase other goods.

Another advantage of cell phone payments is they require no background checks or credit history.

Could Safaricom go to a higher level and enable online payments to enable their subscribers to buy over the web and pay by transferring payments to a website like Mamamikes or is that already happening?

Bank Briefs

Barclays has sweetened its’ mortgage terms

Consolidated: The deposit protection fund (DPF) will sell it’s 50% stake in Consolidated Bank back to the government –who are likely to hold on to the stake until the Bank has a profitable streak that will enable a public listing (e.g. Kenya Re) in a few years. The DPF which guarantees funds of Kenyan bank account holders (up to 100,000 shillings), is now only allowed to invest in government securities.

Equity: As usual, is the first bank to report their September results and Kenya’s fastest growing bank has doubled in almost all measures since a year ago. With assets up 42% and profits up 54% (already exceeded 2005’s) the bank is on track to reach the 1 billion shillings in pre-tax profit mark – a feat the established Nation media group only achieved this year. (See other Bank rankings)

HFCK now offers 20-year mortgage plans.

KCB has four buildings up for sale this month: Hamburg house (Tom Mboya St) for 60 million shillings, Lakhani place (Moi Ave.) 40m, Diamond Building (Moi Ave.) 30m and Loncom Building (Kenyatta Ave – Nakuru) also for 30m. Deadline is 10 November.

Safaricom: Is this the future of money transfers and microfinance?. Safaricom will roll out M-pesa in 2007 which was developed with CBA and Faulu Kenya. Some rough numbers from the trials: Average transaction (1,000 shilling or $14), 0.6 transactions per day, average cash deposit and transfers – 1,500 ($20), and average transfers and withdrawals were 300 shillings each.

Stanchart
– Has a new CEO: Richard Etemesi replaces Mike Hart
– To get new software: CR2’s BankWorld integrated channel banking solution (source: Factiva)

Next at Safaricom?

As promised last month, Safaricom has already introduced a new tariff known as Saasa. Their MD also promised a new product which will change our lives.

While talking on the aircraft with Mental at Johannesburg awaiting takeoff to Nairobi, his Vodacom phone showed out location as Johannesburg Airport – and this was same thing that caused a mini scare on July 1 this year when Safaricom phones displayed users’ locations on the phone screens.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that the revolutionary Safaricom product will be similar to look4it from Vodacom SA, a product which enables phone users to, among other things; locate the nearest cinemas, ATM’s, petrol stations, find out the weather forecast, find your nearest hospital/emergency facility, hotel. Worryingly it may also identify the location of your cellphone, locate an employee’s or family member’s cellphone and communicate this by SMS or over the Internet.