Summary
Telkom Kenya is set to step back into the mobile money business
this month, eight months after the company de-commissioned its ailing
Orange Money product.
Clare Ruto, the company’s chief
legal and regulatory affairs officer, Wednesday said the new mobile
money service was in the “final stages” of approval by the Central Bank
of Kenya. The product was piloted last year among the company’s
employees.
Ms Ruto said that the company was carrying
out technical tests for mobile money interoperability in readiness for
joining a pilot of cross-network transfers that is already being carried
out by Safaricom
and Airtel.
At
the time it was decommissioned last year, Orange Money had the
second-lowest number of subscriptions, after Mobile Pay, and the
smallest agent network.
Re-launching the platform is part of reforms that Telkom Kenya
began implementing after private equity firm Helios bought into the
company in 2016.
Most
significantly, the company rebranded in June 2017, dropping the Orange
identity, and has invested about Sh5.6 billion in expanding and
modernising its network coverage in the country.
Telkom
said that it is “gearing for the second phase” of these network
investments, which will be focused on expanding its 3G and 4G Internet
coverage.
“We want to be a data-centric network,” said
Telkom Kenya chief marketing officer Levi Nyakundi. The company
Wednesday said that it had 3.85 million subscribers, meaning that it has
gained almost one million subscribers in the eight months since it
rebranded.
Communications Authority of Kenya statistics
from June 2017 indicate that Telkom Kenya’s subscriber base was 2.89
million, representing about 7.2 per cent market share.
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