Safaricom unveils M-Pesa donor cash tracking service

Corporate News

Donors will have real-time access to monitor the use of their funds. PHOTO | FILE 

By OKUTTAH MARK

In Summary

• M-Tiba is aimed at improving transparency in the donor community, who have difficulties tracking the use of funds they give to recipients.
• Donors will have real-time access to monitor the use of their funds.
• Only specified and accredited institutions will be able to accept the funds sent to the beneficiary through the M-Tiba system.

Safaricom has unveiled a new M-Pesa based service targeting the health sector that will see donors disburse funds directly to beneficiaries’ mobile phones.

The service dubbed M-Tiba is a closed payment system, aimed at improving transparency in the donor community, who have difficulties tracking the use of funds they give to recipients.

Using M-Tiba, funds will be placed in specialised M-Pesa wallets.

Their use will be restricted to conditional spending at select healthcare providers who form part of a nationwide M-Tiba network.

Donors will have real-time access to monitor the use of their funds. Only specified and accredited institutions will be able to accept the funds sent to the beneficiary through the M-Tiba system.

The service is similar M-Pesa Surepay that Safaricom launched in February. Surepay is already being used by the World Food Programme to send food vouchers to beneficiaries in five food-scarce counties around the country.

It manages the entire value chain right from disbursement to the expenditure of the funds, therefore addressing challenges such as cases of misuse of funds that are intended for particular causes.

M-Pesa Surepay currently has more than 21 million customers and has over the past years emerged to be the most preferred method for non-cash payments.

Safaricom says M-Pesa Surepay is also used by other customers to pay salaries for their staff living in areas that are not covered effectively by financial institutions.

The introduction of the closed-loop payment system comes as Safaricom’s drive for a cashless economy pick pace with the planned deployment of a new M-Pesa platform to support up to 600 transactions per second, and boost deeper integration with other financial service systems.