The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics survey released in 2018 indicated that approximately 400,000 Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) do not celebrate their second birthday, and very few reach five years of ongoing business growth, leading to concerns of sustainability in this critical sector. Further thousands of SMEs were ravaged by COVID-19 and have had to re-imagine how they do business, with digital being at the core of their transformation.
To address these challenges, I&M Bank has enhanced its digital banking offering to MSMEs through a customized, end-to-end cash management, transactional, and lending solution, dubbed “On The Go (OTG)”.
The OTG platform has a number of new features that include a single login function, with advanced security, that allows MSMEs to access all their accounts on one platform, thus enabling them to have a real-time status of all account activity in one place. Additionally, OTG allows its customers to track and forecast cash flows and effectively manage account receivables and payables, it provides access to Unsecured Lending to enable them to drive business growth and it makes bulk payment processing simpler and more efficient through the creation of self-validation templates on a simple to use interface.
The OTG platform is fully digital and MSMEs can create users, and assign roles, workflows, and limits to the users without involving the bank. Further businesses can transact either online or via the mobile app, with online international payments available in 7 currencies namely: USD, GB Pounds, Euros, Indian Rupee, South African rands, Australian Dollars, and Dirham.
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I&M’s CEO, Kihara Maina, said the bank through its Imara 2.0 strategy, has placed digitization as a key enabler for business growth in the MSME segments.
“The enhanced digital banking solutions will enable MSMEs to better plan their day-to-day activities towards gearing their business for growth. I&M Bank will continue to enhance the platform to offer MSMEs tailored products and services that take advantage of customized insights related to their business as well as help them to identify emerging risks,” said Kihara.