By PAUL WAFULA [email protected]
Posted Tuesday, July 17 2012 at 01:00


In what could herald a new beginning for mobile money transfer and present a headache to telecoms operating such services, KCB has launched a new service offering equal, if not better, convenience.


And the public has warmed up to KCB’s service, helping it stake a claim to Safaricom’s Sh2 billion-a-day service.


The service, dubbed Mobi bank, demonstrates the length that commercial banks have had to go to claw back revenue generated by mobile money transfer, which, being a financial transaction, they believe to be rightfully theirs.


It is a fight that kicked off five years ago when financial institutions watched almost helplessly as introduction of M-Pesa by Safaricom disrupted the norms in financial markets, taking with it a big slice of their business.


With no bank account but armed with a phone handset worth below Sh1,000, users could send and receive money anywhere covered by the mobile phone network at any time of the day, making it a darling of many.


Within the first ten months of its launch in March 2007, M-Pesa registered over a million customers, growing to over five million by December 2008.

Read more source: Banks take mobile cash transfer war to telecoms*- Smart Company*|nation.co.ke