Kenya Looks to FinTech, Credit Union Convergence to Advance Growth

Credit unions have served as a financial backbone to millions of households in Africa for decades, with some 39,000 organizations across the continent providing small installment loans and credit lines. Now, the industry is embracing technology to accelerate growth and bring about expanded financial inclusion.

The savings and credit cooperative organization (SACCO) sector in Africa is aggressively stepping up its digitalization efforts to not only drive financial inclusion to the last mile, but ensure that underserved consumers have access to financial services that had been previously unavailable to them or hard to obtain.

The Kenyan FinTech Kwara, founded in 2018 by Cynthia Wandia and David Hwan, was developed to help the unbanked and underbanked build wealth in a frictionless way. Kwara also strives to assist credit unions in East Africa transition to digital platforms.

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..And the Mobile Money Winner is ….

Kenya to set world record $27bn mobile money transfers in 2015

From RT -

“Kenya’s mobile money transactions hit $23 billion in the 10-months to October which is $4 billion more than in the same period last year, according to data from the country’s Central Bank.

The East African country leads the world in mobile money use, and could make a new record this year. Kenya’s 10-month transactions equal the country’s entire transfers for 2014.”

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Safaricom hits banks with new M-Pesa fees

From Mobile Money Africa –
“Safaricom has introduced charges for the transfer of funds from customers’ bank accounts to third-party M-Pesa wallets, sealing a loophole that lenders have been using to by-pass the mobile phone company when sending money.

Wednesday the telco said the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) had approved the charges, effective on December 1.

The announcement comes against the backdrop of a social media war between Safaricom and Equity Bank over fees charged on subscribers to Equitel, its telecommunications subsidiary.

Equity Bank claims that Safaricom has increased its charges for sending money from M-Pesa to Equitel to discourage money transfers from Equitel to third parties on its M-Pesa platform, an allegation that Safaricom has denied.”

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M-Pesa And The Rise Of The Global Mobile Money Market

From Forbes –

“Most people probably don’t think of Kenya as an innovation and technology hub, but in 2007 it became the launching pad for M-Pesa, a transformative mobile phone-based platform for money transfer and financial services. Since then, M-Pesa has undergone explosive growth: in 2013, a staggering 43 percent of Kenya’s GDP flowed through M-Pesa, with over 237 million person-to-person transactions. M-Pesa is nearly ubiquitous in the daily lives of Kenyans due to a range of services that include money deposit and withdrawal, remittance delivery, bill payment, and microcredit provision.”

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