Starting January 1, 2023, sending money from a bank account to a mobile wallet or from a mobile wallet to a bank account will cost money.
This follows the introduction of bank to mobile money transfer charges by the Central Bank of Kenya.
The reintroduction of these charges brought an end a free on transfer charges that had been instituted by the government of former president Uhuru Kenyatta.
The reintroduction comes as a major win for leading telecommunications firm Safaricom and Kenya’s top bank Equity Bank, which have been at the forefront in pressuring the CBK to reintroduce the charges.
In October 2022, Safaricom chief executive officer Peter Ndegwa revealed that Safaricom was in talks with the CBK to have the charges reinstated.
He, however, noted that they were expecting the charges to be less than what Kenyans were paying before the fees were suspended.
“If we go back to charging, it will be at a much lower price than when we started. The same that we did with P-2-P (peer-to-peer), it will be at a much lower price,” he said.
According to Ndegwa, since the waiver of the fees, Safaricom had witnessed significant growth in the amount of money going into banks through its platform.
He added that Safaricom is currently acting like a collection ecosystem for banks, with the agent network growing 50 per cent.
The call by Safaricom followed similar pressure from Equity Bank, making the two corporates the most vocal in calling for the reinstatement of the transfer charges.
In March 2022, Equity Bank chief executive officer Dr. James Mwangi had stepped up calls for the reinstatement of the charges, arguing that banks were losing revenue.
According to Dr. Mwangi, the charges would 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 so that we can have a level playing field,” he had said.
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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.