The central bank of Kenya and mobile operators in the country have agreed to the launch of mobile money merchant interoperability across various networks. An effort by the central bank would imply that users of the various existing networks such as Safaricom's M-Pesa, Airtel Money, and Telkom's T-cash can make payments to any destination regardless of what platform they are registered on. Kenya has over 70% of its population using the mobile money solution.
The African continent has over 150 million active mobile money registered users and over 500 million mobile money accounts making it the largest adopter of mobile money. The Central Bank of Kenya is expanding the access for users in the country through mobile money merchant interoperability. This move will also reduce the complexity for users having to forcefully find alternative methods to make time-consuming payments, making payments seamlessly easy. Mobile money users in Kenya can now look towards the restoration of simplicity and ease in the mobile money market.
For the past decade, Kenya's mobile money has been dominated by Safaricom's M-PESA, with the launch of the mobile money merchant interoperability, Kenya's market is set for healthy competition. As other mobile money operators like Airtel money and Telkom's T-cash can now push for more market power. Hence, achieving the goals of The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) whose drive is to provide a stable and favorable environment to actors in Kenya's market.
Kenya in focus:
Population: 53.77 million in 2020 as compared to 52.57 million in 2019
GDP: $98.84 billion compared to $95.5 billion in 2019
GDP per capita: $1,838 in 2020 compared to $1,816 in 2019
