An employee assists a customer to set-up M-Pesa money transfer servive on his handset inside a mobile phone care centre operated by Kenyan’s telecom operator Safaricom; in the central business district of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, file. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya The average number of daily mobile money transactions carried out by Kenyans since emergency measures to support cashless deals has soared by 9.4 percent, new data shows.
The data from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) puts the average daily transactions at 5.8 million as of April 20 in comparison to 5.3 million transactions prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On March 16, the baking sector regulator announces measures to support cashless payments as a means to contain the pandemic including the waiver of fess on transactions below Ksh.1000 and the charges of switching funds between bank accounts and mobile wallets.
Further, the CBK allowed telco operators to extend the tariff threshold on mobile money transactions from an upper limit of Ksh.70,000 to Ksh.150,000 and lift the mobile money wallet limit to Ksh.300,000.
Subsequently, daily average transaction volumes between Ksh.101 and Ksh.1000 increased by 1.5 million and represented a mean value of Ksh.1.9 trillion.
“This confirms that the waiver of fees for up to Ksh.1,000 encouraged more mobile money transactions,” said the CBK.
Moreover, the new Ksh.70,001-Ksh.150,000 band recorded an average of 5,457 daily transactions valued at Ksh.564.5 million a day.
“This justifies the introduction of the higher limit for mobile money as part of the emergency measures,” the CBK added.
The average value of all mobile money transactions per day was however on the decline shedding 5.1 percentage points to stand at a mean Ksh.7.5 billion.
Transfers between banks and personal mobile wallets rose at a higher 22.2 percent on a weekly basis since the waiver on fees to stand at Ksh.2.2 million in a day with an accompanying value of Ksh.17.4 billion.
“The increase in values of bank to e-wallet transfers may imply some success in the measure of reducing use of physical cash by Kenyans.”On the vice-versa, transfers from electronic wallets to bank accounts rose at the fastest pace of 45.7 percent with values likewise soaring by 20.3 percent to a Ksh.17.4 billion weekly basis from Ksh.7.9 billion.“The increase is a pointer of increased adoption of electronic depositing of funds in bank accounts,” the CBK concluded.The emergency measures apply up to June 30 subject to the review of the sector regulator.Video Of The Day: | CURFEW […]
