Business customers and M-Pesa agents can now transfer millions of shillings through the mobile money platform and access it immediately in cash.
This follows the integration of M-Pesa with the Standard Chartered payment system to enable users to bypass the process of transferring funds to cash which takes minimum six hours.
CEO of Standard Chartered Kenya Lamin Manjang said the agreement allows merchants to transfer a maximum of Sh50 million per transaction which can be withdrawn by the recipient immediately.
Initially, M-Pesa only allowed merchants to transfer a maximum of Sh5 million. In the current arrangement, the transfers will only be allowed from merchant headquarters or from PayBill to PayBill number belonging to their bank.
“Since launch eight years ago, M-Pesa has emerged as the biggest and perhaps the most important positive disruption to the financial services space. This has been made possible by strategic partnerships such as the one we are signing today, that have been informed by the need to develop solutions to common day problems faced by our common customers,” said Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore.
Customers using the service will push e-value from merchant PayBill or till to Standard Chartered PayBill 329329. On receipt of the e-value, Standard Chartered will automatically credit the client’s account.
The proposition targets the banks entire client list, from business, commercial to corporate. Merchants can also transfer and settle as little as Sh10 from the current threshold of Sh35, 000.