MarketPlace

Mobile lending grows in tapping unbanked

eddie

Mr Eddie Ndichu, Managing Director of Opera in Africa. file PHOTO | NMG

Tech companies and banks are turning to mobile for micro lending, cashing in on the unbanked to push products and services.

Barclays Bank of Kenya #ticker:BBK this month launched its Timiza, offering loans between Sh100 and Sh150,000. This comes barely a fortnight after tech firm Opera piloted its Okash mobile application that will offer loans of up to Sh500,000.

“We know that there are more than 20 million people in Kenya who use loans actively every day and we want to give them a high-end product with an exceptional user experience to make their life more comfortable when applying for and making payments with loans,” said Eddie Ndichu, managing director of Opera in Africa.

OKash, together with an M-Pesa account, enables users to access small loans for an interest as low as one per cent per day and a loan term of a maximum of 14 days. The faster a user pays off an active loan, the sooner they can request a new loan.

READ: Barclays launches mobile loan app

Mobile lending is fast becoming a core financial service as firms, large and small, seek to cash in on the use of the devices as a primary source of access to banking services in the country.

The new Barclays’ product offers loans at interest rates of 1.17 per cent per month and one-off facilitation fee of 5 per cent with a repayment period of 30 days.

In December, data from Google indicated that in 2017, the majority of Kenyans spent the year browsing quick mobile and low interest loans.