CBK apologises for excluding merchants from free transaction deal
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) governor Patrick Ngugi Njoroge has apologised after a query was raised on why merchants did not get the same free transaction waiver of sending and receiving up to Sh1,000 through M-Pesa.
A tweep questioned why they were left out and only the M-Pesa charges effected for only personal accounts.
The tweep said as an SME they are being charged for every M-Pesa transaction to or from their account.
This prompted the CBK governor to respond and apologise saying that it will be rectified.
“The waiver of charges for transactions below 1K was inadvertently left out for merchants during implementation by Safaricom. This will be rectified. Sincere apologies,” he said.
The waiver of charges for transactions below 1K was inadvertently left out for merchants during implementation by @Safaricom_Care. This will be rectified. Sincere apologies. https://t.co/etAClOmm0g
— Patrick Njoroge (@njorogep) March 27, 2020
Last week, Safaricom heeded to a plea by President Uhuru Kenyatta in the wake of the coronavirus spread to Kenya urging telcos and banks to reduce the transactions costs so that Kenyans can use cashless transactions such as mobile money and credit cards to cut the risks of contracting the disease.
Safaricom said, following talks with the Central Bank of Kenya and other industry players, they agreed to waive the charges for all transactions below Sh1,000 for person to person.
M-Pesa charges Sh15 for transfer of up to Sh1,000 to registered M-Pesa users and Sh49 for unregistered users, and Sh28 for withdrawals.
The telco also doubled the amount of money that an M-Pesa user can send or withdraw per transaction from the current to Sh70,000 to Sh150,000 and set the daily limit at Sh300,000 up from Sh140,000.
Subscribers will also be allowed to hold up to Sh300,000 in their M-Pesa wallets.
Airtel followed suit with a similar arrangement.