Airtel Money customers will not be able to withdraw funds from Safaricom’s M-Pesa agents. While the same will still apply to MPesa customers, it is Airtel customers who are expected to take the heat.
Airtel says that it still expects customers to withdraw money from agents of the respective networks because “agent interoperability is not available.”
“It all means that when an Airtel Money customer sends money to an M-Pesa customer, the account balance of the M-Pesa customer will be updated instantly and the M-Pesa customer can either go to an M-Pesa agent to withdraw the funds or use it in other mobile cash transactions,” said Airtel.
Subscribers on the Safaricom network will need to use a short code to send money, as opposed to sending money to other M-Pesa subscribers via Sim Toolkit or the Safaricom App.
Safaricom has dubbed its service M-Pesa Popote, setting a minimum Sh10 and a maximum Sh70,000 limit for money being sent or received on M-Pesa.
Prevailing on net money transfer tariffs will apply to any money sent via M-Pesa Tuma Popote while customers sending to unregistered recipients using the menu option will be charged the off net tariff.
“For cross wallet transfer, we have shared our proposed tariff and the same is under review by the Central Bank of Kenya,” Airtel said.
Safaricom is the dominant player in the mobile money market which accounts for 67 per cent of mobile money agents and about 40,000 merchants, who accept M-Pesa payments.
