Wrap-Up: Our pick of main stories, Wednesday August 26th, 2015

Airtel Money partners with KCB for greater reach….Safaricom, Vodafone strike deal on M-Pesa licence fees….NIC Bank, Craft Silicon partner to launch NIC KONNECT….Safaricom suspends new bank-to-third-party MPesa tariffs to December 1, 2015….and much more.

Airtel Money partners with KCB for greater reach

KCB Group and Airtel Kenya have signed a deal that will enable the telco’s mobile money customers to deposit or withdraw money at KCB outlets. The partnership will also see Airtel’s agents obtain ‘float’, the virtual money used in their transactions, from KCB outlets.

NIC Bank, Craft Silicon partner to launch NIC KONNECT

NIC Bank Group has announced that it will be the first bank in Kenya to launch an innovative social media banking platform, dubbed “NIC KONNECT”. NIC KONNECT will allow customers to use various social media platforms to securely access their banking services. This innovative mobile banking product will be available through Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter and Telegram.

Liquid Telecom records more than doubling in local African content on African internet networks

Liquid Telecom, Africa’s independent internet service provider, has recorded a sharp climb in the proportion of local content on its network, from 20 per cent three years ago to now 50 per cent, driven by the deepening of Africa’s internet infrastructure, and saving providers and Internet users now millions of dollars a year in the costs of fetching data from outside the continent. Presenting to AfPIF, the African Peering and Interconnection Conference run by the Internet Society, in Mozambique today, Mathew Chigwende, Head of Data Networks at Liquid Telecom, reported that three factors – the ongoing climb in the number of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) serving the continent; the expansion of CDN Content Delivery Networks in Africa; and the interconnection between telcos and ISPs – were together seeing the proportion of data being uploaded to, or fetched from, outside Africa fall by 10 percentile points a year.

Airtel is top Social Media brand in Kenya – Africa Brand Index

Airtel Kenya has been recognized as the top Social Media Brand in Kenya by the Africa Brand Index, a listing of the most successful brands in Africa on social media, according to key metrics such as community growth, content engagement, sentiment and dozens of others. The Africa Brand Index is a listing of the top brands on social media, measured by an aggregate score of dozens of social signals. Airtel Kenya has been listed as the top brand on social media in the country based on its growth and response rate on the rankings provided by the index as shown in the link.

Safaricom suspends new bank-to-third-party MPesa tariffs to December 1, 2015

In order to avoid the potential of a fallout with its banking partners, Safaricom has moved first to suspend its new rates for bank to third party MPesa accounts which took effect less than a month ago on August 1, 2015. The revised tariffs for bank to third party MPesa transfers were communicated to banks by Safaricom’s GM for Enterprise Rita Okuthe in a letter dated July 9 this year.

Safaricom, Vodafone strike deal on M-Pesa licence fees

Safaricom executives have struck a deal with the Vodafone, the telecom’s UK parent company, to slash the multi-billion-shilling licence fees the M-Pesa money transfer platform attracts. One of Vodafone’s subsidiaries owns the intellectual property rights on M-Pesa, and earns between 10 and 11 per cent of the revenues generated by the platform in a deal entered into in 2007, which capped the fee at 25 per cent.