Mobile banking has really come of age in the last few years. As Carol Musyoka wrote CBA has moved from about 64,000 accounts before M-Shwari to 12.9 million accounts as at December 2015 primarily due to this virtual platform (i.e. M-shwari) without any exponential growth in its branch expansion.
The ability to save and borrow money just by using a few clicks on your phone has been revolutionary. Over at Equity Bank, CEO James Mwangi talks about the application for loans that start at 1 am, with approval being done in a few hours and the loans being disbursed to borrowers phones at 5 a.m. – long before the bank branch doors open at 8 a.m.
The interest rate-capping bill (Njomo) which covers loans has been deemed to cover all bank loans, but this has seen different interpretations at the leading banks that offer dedicated phones banking services:
Apply and get a loan directly on our phone
- CBA: Have insisted that the 7.5% fee that they charge is not interest, but a facility fee. This has been the case since M-shwari launched back in 2012. The are said to have issued Kshs 40 billion by the end of 2015, and across the border, CBA has got 60,000 mobile bank customers in Uganda in just two months in partnership with MTN (MoKash)
- Coop Bank: Disburse mobile salary advance loans at 1.16% and business loans at 1.2%. They don’t charge any facilitation fees and loan are payable in 1 to 3 months. (Simply sial *667# to apply for a #CoopMobileLoan). Coop are reported to be processing about 1,300 loan applications a day up from 250 per day before the rate cap. (70% of its new loan applications this month were requests for refinancing of existing loans). In 2015, the service had 2.7 million users, and 183,000 loans were disbursed.
- Equity: Adjusted all their loans, including credit cards and mobile bank loans to 14.5% (Previously “Eazzy Loan” and “Eazzy Loan Plus” products had an interest rate of between 2% and 10% per month) . The loans are said tp have a 1% facilitation fee
- KCB resumed lending their m-pesa loans after a three-week technical hitch. They have adjust loan rates to 1.16% with a one-off negotiation fee of 2.55% resulting in a total of 3.66% (including government excise duty tax) on loans. The loan duration has also been reduced to just one month – with no more 3 or 6 month loans.