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Safaricom, Standard Chartered unite to empower merchants

Kenya , 15 Jul 2015

Safaricom, Standard Chartered unite to empower merchants

In a first of its kind, Safaricom and Standard Chartered have launched a new service that will see MPesa merchants settle their deposits within seconds.

This is in retrospect to the current system where merchants can wait for hours and even days before converting their e-value to cash in their bank accounts.

Many business people are accepting MPesa payments from their customers through the Lipa na MPesa payment platform and they have to settle the funds with banks.

This new partnership promises a fast and convenient settlement for the merchants, who will have limits between Kshs10 from a previous minimum of Kshs 35,000 to Kshs 50 million shillings from a previous minimum of Kshs 5 million shillings.

"We are giving competitive advantage to the clients of the bank," Standard Chartered Bank's Lamin Manjang said. "With the solution that we have, the merchant gets the money almost in real time."

He said that providing merchants with the speed to cash out their payments will greatly enhance their businesses making them more liquid.

Speaking to ITWeb Africa on the sidelines of the signing, Manjang said that the service will be open to all merchants who bank with Standard Chartered. The bank said that the funds transfer will be allowed only from a merchant headquarters or through a merchant paybill to the banks' paybill.

During their annual financial report in May, Safaricom announced that they had converted up to 5 percent of what was previously cash payments. Currently, supermarkets, airlines and hotels are some of the merchants who use MPesa as a way of payment.

The company reported that by March 2015 they had 49,413 merchants active on a 30 day basis, receiving Kshs 11.6bn of payments monthly.

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