Kenyans use mobile payment platforms more frequently than plastic money. PHOTO | FILE
By DAVID HERBLING, hdavid@ke.nationmedia.com
Plastic-card payments registered the slowest growth
in five years as the gap between them and mobile cash transactions
continues to widen in favour of the latter.
The latest Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) data shows that card
payments only grew 6.6 per cent to Sh1.3 trillion last year compared to
Sh1.2 trillion in 2014.
However, mobile payments grew by a fifth to gross
Sh2.8 trillion in the period to December 2015 compared to Sh2.3 trillion
a year earlier.
The continued dominance of mobile money payments in
Kenya over plastic cards is attributed to a lack of infrastructure such
as payment terminals to support uptake of cards.
“Many African countries are in the early stages of
developing their financial systems with appropriate infrastructure to
support electronic payments,” Moody’s Analytics said in a new study.
Kenya’s total number of point of sale (PoS) terminals stands at 22,230
and is seen as the missing link in getting more consumers to adopt a
cash-lite lifestyle by shifting to electronic payments.
This translates to a per capita ratio of one payment terminal for every 2,000 Kenyans.
On the flipside, the number of traders accepting
mobile money payments in Kenya is estimated at about 100,000 — offering
consumers more points to pay via mobile cash than plastic cards.
The number of active Lipa na M-Pesa merchants has doubled in a year to hit 49,413 as at March 2015.
Lipa Sasa Na MobiKash, which allows customers from
any of the mobile networks to settle bill payments at a standard fee of
Sh15, said it has signed up 3,500 traders to the service.
Bill Maurer, a US-based mobile money expert, said
mobile money had leapfrogged cards given the ease and convenience to
make mobile payments which needs a basic infrastructure.
“The roll out of plastic cards back in the day was a
long, slow slog,” said Dr Maurer, director of the Institute for Money,
Technology and Financial Inclusion at the University of California,
Irvine.
Attempts by banks and card processing payments
firms such as Visa and MasterCard to expand into Kenya’s lucrative cash
transfer space have failed to lead to major service uptake.
Equity Bank
in May 2013 partnered with Visa to launch a mobile money transfer
service dubbed Visa Personal Payments, which allows users to send money
directly from one mobile phone to another.
Rival MasterCard has also unveiled MasterCard Send,
offering cardholders the option of sending or receiving real-time funds
via their cards.
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