Corporate News
President Uhuru Kenyatta uses his card to pay for a matatu ride after
registering for My 1963. Looking on are Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore
(centre) and Transport secretary Michael Kamau. PHOTO | PSCU
By DAVID HERBLING, hdavid@ke.nationmedia.com
In Summary
- Safaricom said it has a “partnership” interest in My 1963 travel card with Mwakio Ngale, a Nairobi-based techie through his IT firm Fibre Space Ltd.
- Safaricom said Matatu Owners Association (MOA) has no stake in the venture, contrary to earlier speculation.
- The firm has ring-fenced the My 1963 card to have it exclusively recharged via M-Pesa unlike other cards that can also be topped up using other mobile cash service providers.
Safaricom
has revealed that it has a commercial interest in the cashless fare
payment card dubbed My 1963, which puts the telco among the biggest
beneficiaries of the new system expected to start operating Monday.
My 1963 card was launched about a month ago in a
high-profile ceremony presided over by President Uhuru Kenyatta and
Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore, generating speculation on the ownership of
the card which also appeared to have the backing of matatu (public
service vehicle) owners.
Most of the other matatu cashless fare payment
options also rely on mobile money top-ups, again providing a major
revenue earning opportunity for Safaricom.
“My 1963 is a partnership between Safaricom and
Fibre Space (a Nairobi-based IT firm),” said the chief officer in charge
of new products at Safaricom Betty Mwangi-Thuo in an interview last
Friday.
Kenya’s lucrative PSV industry grossed Sh218.1
billion revenue last year, whetting the appetite of banks and mobile
money firms who stand to rake in a minimum of Sh2.1 billion annually in
commissions, assuming a processing fee of one per cent.
Safaricom said it has a “partnership” interest in
My 1963 travel card with Mwakio Ngale, a Nairobi-based techie through
his IT firm Fibre Space Ltd.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed telco
however said Matatu Owners Association (MOA) has no stake in the
venture, contrary to earlier speculation.
It has branded the My 1963 card “a product of Safaricom |M-Pesa.”
The National Transport Safety Authority (NTSA) set
Monday’s deadline for a ban on cash fare payments in Kenya’s public
service vehicles as part of a plan by the government to formalise the
matatu sector.
Safaricom has ring-fenced the My 1963 card to have
it exclusively recharged via M-Pesa unlike other cards that can also be
topped up using other mobile cash service providers.
Other cashless payment service platforms include BebaPay (run by Equity and Google), Abiria (Kenya Bus Service), Pepea (KCB), Tangaza Pesa PSV card and Co-op Bank’s M-Nauli.
Safaricom is pursuing a multi-pronged approach to
cash in from the cash-lite matatu policy by rolling out its own commuter
card and also assigning M-Pesa paybill numbers to matatu operators.
The service is called Lipa Fare na M-Pesa where
travellers do not incur any transaction charges and matatu owners pay a
one per cent commission based on the value of total fares collected via
the mobile platform.
Safaricom’s entry into bus fare payments steps up
the firm’s efforts to increase mass usage of M-Pesa having already
launched payment schemes such as Lipa Kodi for rent, Lipa Karo for
schools fees and Lipa Na M-Pesa for retail merchants.
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