Search Results for: safaricom

Central Bank of Kenya Declines to cap the free M-Pesa transactions to five

olivia Craig
M-Gas Mpesa Central Bank of Kenya

Kenya’s leading telco Safaricom has lost the bid to cap free M-Pesa transactions to five. This comes after subscribers split high-value transfers to avoid paying transfer fees, costing it billions of shillings in revenues. The company had petitioned the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) to cap the number of multiple transactions between two numbers, according to a recent disclosure of conference call transcripts between Safaricom and investors seen by the Business Daily. Safaricom reported that customers were splitting high-value money transfers of as high as Sh60,000 to deals of below…

DStv to add Netflix and Amazon Prime Video on its platforms in a strategic shift

Editor
DStv

DStv will add Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to its platforms, in a strategic shift that has seen its parent firm, MultiChoice, sign partnership deals with the giant movie streaming services. Netflix poses a growing competitive threat to MultiChoice and its own streaming service, Showmax, and the partnership move marks a shift in MultiChoice’s strategy from trying to compete with such players to working with them instead. The parent company of DStv and GOtv has been facing competition from movie streaming service and internet providers such as Zuku and Safaricom…

Airtel and Telkom merger approved

Dianne Jacobs
CAK

Kenya’s telecommunication sector is set to become a duopoly after Airtel and Telkom Kenya received approval from the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) to merge their businesses. The firms however have to wait for approval from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK), which might take awhile as the industry regulator is currently facing a leadership crisis following nullification of the board of directors appointed earlier this year.The merged operator, which will be renamed Airtel-Telkom, will now battle it out with Safaricom once the transaction is concluded. CAK yesterday gave the…

MPESA option now available on Aliexpress App

olivia Craig

Shopping online can seem like a daunting task to some people, especially considering the  limited payment options and security issues that bog online transactions. Alibaba-owned e-commerce platform, AliExpress, has slowly but steadily gained popularity in Kenya as the platform opens up the Chinese vast goods market to Kenyans. International shopping in Kenya has mainly relied on third-party services such a Vitumob or Something Random, that aim to connect locals to the well-established platforms like Amazon but recently we have seen these shopping websites make an effort to directly reach their…

PesaPal adds new payments options on app in partnership with M-Pesa, Visa & MasterCard

Electronic payments firm PesaPal has added payment options in its integrated mobile money processing platform for shoppers and those making utility payments. The company said its users will be able to leverage on its new app — dubbed PesaPal Mobile — to buy airtime, pay bills, book flights and holidays, purchase event tickets and pay school fees. It has partnered with Safaricom’s M-Pesa, Visa and MasterCard to enable the payments “Available on both Android’s Google Play Store and Apple‘s App Store, the app is geared towards consumers looking to simplify…

Fintech Will Contribute $150 Billion to Africa’s GDP by 2022

Dianne Jacobs

The contribution of the financial-technology industry to sub-Saharan Africa’s economic output will increase by at least $40 billion to $150 billion by 2022, according to Financial Sector Deepening Africa, a development-finance organization. The industry currently employs about 3 million people directly and indirectly in the region, FSD Africa Financial Markets Director Evans Osano said in an interview on Thursday. Sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product is about $1.6 trillion, according to data compiled by the International Monetary Fund. “If you look at the value chain, most of that money is coming…

JuuBike: Streamlining the Kenyan Bodaboda Transport Sector

Dianne Jacobs

The Boda Boda Safety Association of Kenya recently launched a new app called JuuBike that will connect riders to customers in what the Association says will streamline the industry and inject discipline. The IBCA caught up with its founder who told us more about it. How can you define the technology sector in Kenya? JuuBike: The technology in Kenya has been improving rapidly and being adopted by very many different sectors eg, communication,Transport, manufacturing and many others. It has the engine that is driving the Kenyan economy as today almost everything is…

Self-care Apps on the rise

Dianne Jacobs

Millennials may be a bit obsessed with self-care — and it’s beginning to pay off for the makers of self-care and digital wellness apps. According to data from multiple app store intelligence firms, the category is now seeing notable growth. In the first quarter of 2018, the top 10 grossing self-care apps in the U.S. earned $15 million in combined iOS and Android revenue, and $27 million in worldwide revenue, according to Sensor Tower. The firm also found that the top 10 wellness apps (e.g. mindfulness and meditation) made about 170…

Q&A with Matt Roberts-Davies, M-Changa; Create Innovative Products That Match Local Culture

Dianne Jacobs

ITBusiness spoke with Matt Roberts-Davies, the Business Development Manager/Experience Director at M-Changa, a fundraiser management platform that provides cutting edge end-to-end management tools to enhance fundraising success. The session is majorly on the tech trends in Africa and the novelty of the internet of things (IoT). 1. How can you define the technology sector in Kenya? There is a lot of buzz around tech in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city. One of the main reasons for this is the success of M-Pesa, a digital wallet that has reached mass adoption in…

Uber and Little Cab’s duel for Nairobi’s Taxi Market

Uber Africa launches Uber Cash in partnership with Flutterwave

Uber is in the middle of a bruising battle for dominance in east Africa’s largest economy: Kenya. The ride-hailing company started operating in the cities of Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Thika last year. It has already outlasted the online cab operator Easy Taxi, which opted out of the Kenyan market in May this year following a decision by one of its backers, Goldman Sachs, to direct all its investments towards the more profitable Uber. However, Uber now has a new domestic rival: Safaricom. It’s one of Kenya’s largest companies, 40%…