Kenya’s mobile money lending service, M-Shwari, the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) and telco Safaricom have introduced a fixed deposit account, at a rate of up to 6% per annum.

Dubbed ‘Lock Savings Account’, the service was launched after what the CBA has termed as constant demand from customers intending to make small savings towards realising a short-term goal.

“We introduced this new feature on the strength of recurrent customer feedback that suggested the need for a facility which would inherently instill in them the discipline required to make medium-term savings towards a specific goal,” CBA chief executive officer Jeremy Ngunze said in a statement.

M-Shwari users will now be able to save a minimum of KShs 500 ($5.7) for a maximum of six months.

M-Shwari already offers a savings account option where users earn interest on their savings but with the option of withdrawing the money at their pleasure.

However, with the new fixed account, the funds saved on the ‘Lock Savings’ account will be kept in the account until the maturity date, which the customer determines upon opening the account.

With savings being held in its reserves for a longer period, CBA expects that its loans book will grow, giving it more funds to lend out to more customers.

Since the launch of M-Shwari back in 2012, CBA loan accounts grew to 897,000 by end of last year as compared to 89,000 accounts back in 2012, just before the mobile loan service was launched.

The service already boasts of over seven million customers who have transacted more than Kshs 156 billion over the two years it has been running.

The bank also recently launched a similar service in Tanzania dubbed M-Pawa, and has reported over 250,000 registered customers in just three weeks.