Telecommunication giant Safaricom has introduced a new service that will allow its Kenyan customers to request airtime from friends and family.

The service dubbed Niokolee is available for both prepay and post-pay customers. Safaricom customers with insufficient airtime can request a top-up of between Sh 10 and Sh 100 from family and friends.

How Niokolee works

To opt-in, customers are required to dial *444# from their Safaricom line and select “Niokolee,” then Select “Request Kredo.” You will then enter the Safaricom number you would like to request credit from.

The next step will be entering the predefined airtime amount and submit, then wait for the recipient Safaricom number user to either accept or decline your request.

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Niokolee requests receivers will, on the other hand, receive a notification from 44444 asking them to “Accept” or “Decline” the request.

Once the request is accepted, the amount will be transferred to the requestor’s account, and both parties will receive the transaction notification. The Niokolee menu also has the option to share airtime, similar to Sambaza.

The latest product comes a few weeks after Safaricom launched a new M-Pesa payment method that will allow customers to pay for goods and services using a QR code.

“The Kenya Universal QR Code is live on the M-Pesa App, M-Pesa Business App, and my Safaricom App. We will also enable automatic QR code creation on the Lipa Na M-Pesa Merchant Portal and through APIs on Daraja,” said Safaricom in a statement.

Besides reducing the time taken to complete a transaction, the QR code will eliminate the risk of sending money to the wrong recipients.