Equity Bank chief executive officer James Mwangi has stepped up his push for bank to mobile money transfer charges to be brought back.
According to Dr. Mwangi, the charges will level the playing field between banks and telecommunication firms that offer mobile money transfer services such as Safaricom. “We have seen the central bank has reinstated the charges of microfinance institutions it has reinstated it has reinstated for telecom sector we hope the transaction mobile fees for the bank are also going to be considered for reinstatement s that we can have a level playing field,” he said.
Dr. Mwangi alluded that Banks are losing millions per month due to the free transfers between them and wallets such as M-Pesa given that they used to charge fees ranging from Sh. 30 to Sh. 197 before the waivers were introduced.
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The call for the bank to mobile money transfer charges to reinstalled comes barely days after the bank announced that it will be giving out its loans at interest rates of as high as 18.5 per cent.
Equity says that the lowest it will lend will be at 13 per cent, putting its range between 13 and 18.5 per cent. “Interest on loans will now be based on the risk of the client. We are using sovereign risk as the base, then adding the risk of the individual sector and then within the sector the specific client risk and then we add operational costs,” said Dr. Mwangi.
According to the bank said that small businesses will get its loans at between 14 percent and 16 percent while unsecured loans will attract the highest rate.
