Airtel Kenya is counting on supermarket chain Naivas’ expansive network to popularise its mobile money business after the duo inked a deal that will allow all the retailer's branches countrywide to be used as Airtel Money agents.
In a statement on Tuesday, Kenya’s second-largest telecoms operator said its mobile money customers will be able to deposit and withdraw cash across all Naivas branches within the country, terming the development a strategy to expand its agent footprint to get closer to the customer.
“This partnership underscores Airtel Money's commitment to expanding our reach and ensuring that our services are easily accessible,” said Airtel Money managing director Anne Kinuthia-Otieno.
Airtel is currently running a free cash withdrawal promotion dubbed ‘Rudishiwa Transaction Fee’ that was launched last December, and which sees customers get reimbursed their withdrawal transaction fees in the form of airtime refunds.
Airtel also offers free cash transfers among its clients and charges remittances to rival platforms like Safaricom's M-Pesa.
The deal with Naivas is seen as an addition to the ongoing aggressive effort by the telco to magnify the reach of its e-money offering which has largely been hampered by lack of adequate spread of agent networks.
Naivas, which was established in 1990, has grown to become the largest supermarket chain in Kenya with a network of 109 branches and more than 10,000 employees.
Airtel Money’s expansion drive bagged a first boost last year after the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) gave a regulatory nod to mobile money operators to increase daily transaction limits to Sh500,000 up from the previous limit of Sh300,000.
In February this year, Airtel moved to implement a transactional policy review that scrapped a code that forced customers on the Airtel Money platform to withdraw cash within a week of receipt or see the money revert to the sender.
“This development effected on February 6, 2024, comes in response to the CBK and industry players’ collaborative efforts to ensure seamless mobile money interoperability as outlined in the CBK National Payments Strategy 2022-2025,” said Airtel at the time.
Latest regulatory data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) shows that the market share of Airtel Money more than doubled to 6.6 percent during the year to June 2024 up from 2.8 percent in June 2023, eating into M-Pesa whose share shrunk to 93.4 percent from 97.1 over the same period.
As of March this year, Safaricom reported that a total of 8,344 M-Pesa agents had closed down due to a new policy that now forces them to operate their businesses at a particular location all the time, leaving the dominant platform with 262,016 agents against Airtel Money’s current 90,000.
