Kenyans preference for moblie money transfer

Many Kenyans prefer using mobile money transfer to pay their bills to using hard cash.

In the Communications Authority’s quarterly report data, it is shown that 103 mobile money transactions are being made per second across the country, which is a significant rise from 92 e-wallet transfers that were made the same period last year.

Out of the 103 transactions made per second 75 of them went into paying for commodities and different utilities such as electricity and water bills.

The value of mobile money transactions grew 13.5 per cent over the April-June period to Sh2.28 trillion compared to Sh1.92 trillion the same period last year.

This therefore means that Kenyans moved Sh23.96 billion on a daily basis between April and June, translating into Sh16.64 being transacted digitally per minute.

The Data by the Communications Authority shows active mobile money subscriptions increased to Sh32.6 million from Sh29.6 million in 2018 revealing that more Kenyans prefer using their mobile wallets to hard cash.

The result of this has also earned Kenya a spot among the six countries that are identified as leaders in the expansion of Africa’s global digital economy ( Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth in collaboration with The Fletcher School at Tufts University in the US).

The value of e-commerce transactions accounted for 89.45 per cent of all mobile cash transfers at Sh1.95 trillion while person-to-person transactions were valued at Sh770.96 billion.

A total of 591.1 million transactions valued at Sh1.9 trillion were made through the mobile payment platforms (Paybill and Till Numbers),” CA said in the report.

This is a remarkably 34.26 per cent increase from Sh1.43 trillion used to pay bills the same period in 2018.

On the other hand, person-to-person transactions increased by Sh95.37 billion to Sh770.96 billion.

At least Sh8.08 trillion was transacted in the form of deposits and withdrawals as well as mobile commerce transfers during the 2018/19 financial year, 94.06 per cent of the value of Kenya’s GDP at Sh8.59 trillion.

Safaricom, through it’s M-Pesa platform, controlled 78.44 per cent of the mobile money market with transactions valued at Sh1.71 trillion.

However, both Airtel-money and Telkom’s T-Kash struggled to make lead in the mobile cash market cumulatively accounting for less than one per cent of total transactions at Sh843.95 million and Sh301.8 million respectively.