Cashless transactions gaining ground

The mode of paying for services is fast changing in Kenya due to advances in mobile technology.

Today, mobile money platforms are becoming part of the banking systems and are easily usable even by the not-so tech-savvy majority.

Be it shopping, transferring money or paying bills, the mobile phone is becoming the gadget of choice with mobile payment applications making it possible to complete a purchase without even having a credit card on hand.

Better still, paying via a card or smartphone comes with the convenience of having an electronic record of the transaction which help you track your payments.

Laban Gachie, a budding entrepreneur in Nairobi, is among those reaping the benefits of cashless money transfer systems.

Gachie, who has accounts with Equity Bank and Safaricom’s M-Pesa, rears chicken for eggs and has never carried money in cash form to pay his suppliers and workers.

“I have an MKesho account which connects my M-Pesa and Equity Bank accounts. This helps to easily move money from my bank account to my M-Pesa account from where I pay my workers. For my suppliers, I simply use Equity’s Eazzy 24/7 to transfer money from my bank account to theirs after which I only need to send them the deposit notification via an SMS format,” explains Gachie.

Queues

Gachie adds that he also pays most of his utility bills via M-Pesa. Indeed, many consumers are shying away from long queues when it comes to paying for services.

Most banks in Kenya and around the world have adopted a cashless system when making payments.

This only needs account holders to register with the service provider in order to access the service.

More and more establishments locally are joining the cashless party with institutions like Kenya’s Higher Education Loans Board having loanees service their loans via the mobile phone.

According to Eran Feinstein, Managing Director 3G Direct Pay Ltd, a leading global shopping and online payments provider, most online payment systems now have also inculcated the mobile payment option apart from the usual credit and debit cards.

3G Direct Pay recently launched a recurrent payment solution alongside their e-commerce solutions, which allows merchants and clients to pay for goods and services online.

Eran says the automatic recurrent payments module has been specifically designed to facilitate merchants to collect online payments directly from the customer debit/credit and/or pre-paid card.