The Central Bank of Kenya plans to extend a set of measures for users to continue mobile payments during the current pandemic. For that reason, the central bank has extended free mobile money transactions less than Sh1,000.
It is reported that some of these measures are permanent, while the remaining have been extended till the end of this year.
This is in an attempt to help the country curb the spread of Covid-19 over the next six months. Previously, the country had introduced various other measures to boost cashless payments.
The central bank said in a statement, “These measures, that were introduced in March to facilitate increased use of mobile money instead of cash, in light of Covid-19, will remain in force from July 1, 2020 until December 31, 2020.”
According to the central bank, over 1.6 million additional customers are now using mobile money channels. It appears that the measures introduced by the central bank have impacted on the mobile operators’ revenue earned. For instance, Safaricom saw a loss of $52 million in mobile money transfers in a period of three months.
However, Safaricom’s M-Pesa mobile money platform had over 20 million active users of the 47 million population. The waiver was accepted by mobile phone companies is March.