Kenya’s SMEs to benefit from Mobile2Bank service

Chase Bank Kenya has partnered with Safaricom to launch Mobile2Bank, a service that will boost the efficiency of businesses by aggregating all their services and making them accessible through a mobile phone.

SMEs within any distribution, Manufacturing, Retail/FMCG et cetera will now be able to do business conveniently and faster than ever before.

“Mobile2Bank and its service first starts with very simply giving a business a LipaNaM-PESA buy goods number or a pay bill number and then it moves on to give a customer a very simple four-digit pin on Chase Bank’s mfukoni mobile banking platform,  instantly and automatically behind this a bank account is opened for the business. Now this bank account is what allows and facilitates the simplicity of this service.” said Mr Eddie Ndichu.

Mobile2Bank seeks to resolve all this with a four menu mobile service:

Ability to Collect

This service allows a customer to not only receive a payment using till numbers but on all LipaNaM-PESA services both pay bill and buy goods and instantly get credit in an account that they can access the funds in real time. Every shilling paid by LipaNaM-PESA is instantly accessible at no fee to the business.

Pay Anyone

This service allows a business to pay any pay bill and any till number for LipaNaM-PESA and the most revolutionary is any bank account in Kenya via M-PESA instantly even after 3 p.m. and on weekends. This ability to pay anyone comes with a limit of 2.5 million at any one time and up to 10 million for the business.

“What is very exciting for us is that we’ve managed to bring down the cost of the simple pay anyone service to literally half to what customers today pay with RTGS. It’s not going to be any more than Kshs 250 and it will be as little as Kshs 50 depending on the value that is being paid.” added Ndichu.

Instant Credit

This is the ability to give this business access to credit, this is the instant credit Biashara loan capability.

“By being able to collect for a business and being able to allow that business to make a payment. We have one of the most important pieces of information and most valid which is a turnaround for that business. With this information we’re able to instantly under three minutes make decision, approve and disburse up to three million to the business,” added Ndichu

Agency Float Buying

An agent no longer has to line up or wait for the opening of a bank branch to buy float. Float can be bought instantly from their accounts or Biashara loan and they may also be able to top up float for other agents.

This is unique because for the first time in the history of M-PESA, Chase Bank has been able to digitize M-PESA agents transactions.

“This product demonstrates how innovation in the mobile space can be harnessed to address some of the common pain points in businesses. With Mobile2Bank businesses-small and large will no longer need to make physical withdrawal of cash from bank accounts to make payments to third parties thereby enhancing their efficiency,” said Paul Njaga, CEO, Chase Bank.

Safaricom’s CEO, Bob Collymore said,”Mobile-money has been the most impactful positive disruption to the financial services sector and we are proud to be at the core of this development.Mobile2Bank launch today illustrates that we can still do more through strategic partnerships.”

With an estimated 1 million businesses in Nairobi alone, Chase Bank’s Mobile2Bank service will for the first time ever allow businesses to take advantage of mobile money to accept and make payments cheaper than ever before.