MarketPlace

Innovation pays off for PesaLink with global award

pesa

From left: Kenya Bankers Association vice-chair John Gachora, IPSL chief executive Jennifer Theuri and her KBA counterpart, Habil Olaka, during the launch of PesaLink in February. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU

PesaLink, a Kenyan platform that enables transfers of money from one bank account to another in real time, last week won the Best Banking Initiative Award at the 10th annual Emerging Payments Awards held in London.

This international recognition could make the global business players pay close attention to the innovation moves of their counterparts in the country.

“We managed to win the award by ensuring that we maintained global benchmarks. On several fronts, the platform exceeds the customary expectations and remains far superior to its contemporaries thanks to the hard work put in by our suppliers Tieto and the project team at Integrated Payment Services Limited (IPSL)”, said IPSL CEO, Jennifer Theuri.

“As a platform, it stands out as the most revolutionary payments solution in the world, it allows customers to send money from one bank account to another bank account in real time on all banks’ retail payment channels including mobile, ATM, Internet banking, agency, bank branches and point of sale.

PesaLink has so far managed to oversee Sh15bn transactions since its launch in February.

The Emerging Payments Awards are the highlight of the payments innovation calendar in Europe and globally. It awards companies that have made significant advances in how people make transactions. Under a joint entry with the Finnish software firm, Tieto, PesaLink was nominated for two awards; Best Online Payments Solution and Best Banking Initiative.

While Amazon Pay walked away with the award for Best Online Payments Solution, PesaLink beat Monese; a European banking service with approximately 40,000 users that enables residents and non-resident consumers to open a bank account in the UK on their smartphone. Tide is an application that allows consumers to open a business current account in five minutes and has features that enables them to automate bookkeeping and also pay and send invoices via their smartphone.

It also beat mobile point of sale solutions, POStoGO and SmartPay Sogexia. Such a global win by a fairly new platform in the market could thus showcase Kenya’s potential to innovate its own products to meet market demands thus not relying on international players in order to make progression in different sectors.

“It implies that our country is steadily advancing on the intellectual economy space. It speaks volumes on our capacity to develop solutions to meet our needs. Most importantly this wins confirms the commitment by local commercial banks under the auspices of Kenya Bankers Association to advance financial inclusivity as a key factor of national development,” said Theuri.

An example of a company from an emerging market that made global players take notice of its country’s growing innovative products is India’s car manufacturing corporation Mahindra and Mahindra.

In 2003, its car called Scorpio which had been launched the previous year, won the prestigious car/SUV of year award from Business Standard Motoring, BBC on wheels and CNBC Autocar, ahead of global best sellers such as Mercedes-Benz E-Class and Toyota Camry sedans.

The win made the market leaders of the car industry take notice of the manufacturing potential in the country.

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