With 829,000 shareholders Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile phone company is taking the step of enhance investor relations by using m-pesa, its money transfer system, to pay out the annual dividend to shareholders.
At just 0.10 shillings per share, it will not amount to much, with several thousand shareholder receiving a divided of Kshs 22 (~$0.30) , and if shareholders get paid by bank cheque, the traditional method of paying dividend up to now, it will cost them more to do so (typically Kshs. 50-100), than the cheque is worth. Paying my m-pesa will reduce the cost to Safaricom and its investors – as it’s a good bet that a vast majority of shareholders are also M-pesa users (there are over 5 million registered) 
Last week the company published a list of locations where shareholders can register for the m-pesa dividend payment option through the month of September for payment in November 2009. All an investor needs is their identity card and proof of shareholding e.g. CDS statement (and photo copies of each). If it’s successful, it will likely be taken up/imitated by other listed companies e.g. Kengen, Kenya Re through their registrars and other mobile companies like Zain (with Zap money transfer) and Yu (launching a money transfer next month) as another mobile partnership possibility.
this is a good idea. i like the way people are using mpesa so much. good news for safaricom eh? but this increased usage brings in the issue of security. is mpesa safe? it is well known that paypal is not used in Africa because those Nigerian hackers compromised it(thanks alot geeks. because of you internet businesses have had a lot of problems in transactions). if if an online bank can be hacked into, then what about a money sending service? and the increased internet speeds do nothing to help this potential problem. what do you think?
BTW what happened to salute to Kenyan stockbrokers part 2?
THE M-PESA IDEA IS GREAT… THOUGH TH TEN CENTS STINKS… PLUS IT LOCKS IN THE CASH ITS SO BRIGHT THAT THOSE POOR KENYANS COULD NOT HELP BUT CALL MJ AND HIS COLLEAGUES NAMES… BTW CHECK OUT http://biasharaleo.blogspot.com
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK…. HAVE BEEN A FAN OF YOURS FOR YEARS, THOUGH ALWAYS IN THE BCKGROUND… TRYING TO GET MY OWN THING GOING…
kenyantykoon: 6 million use it, few complaints so far, but you do raise some interesting security issues
Peter: the share float was the mistake – 10 billion listed shares, if they had aimed for a billion, the divided would be 1/=
Dividend payment by M-Pesa is a great idea. Sometime it does not make sense when one get a check of like ksh.80, even banking such amount is a big waste of time.
@kenyantykoon when come to security, there is a big risk now. Before the arrival of the fiber optic cables the internet connection in Kenya was so erratic to the extent that the hackers did not have enough connection to get through. Now that things are changing and the internet connections are becoming stable, there is a case to worry. The rate of sites being hacked in Kenya so far is already a proof that things are thick