Kenya Power sees end to queues as customers shift to mobile payments

By 10am Tuesday, Electricity House, Kenya Power’s main commercial hall located on Nairobi’s Aga Khan Walk, was full with customers.

But undeterred, more customers continued to stream in. While dozens of them said they had walked in for general enquiries, majority had come to pay their monthly bills.

Electricity House, just like other Kenya Power commercial halls across the country, is known for long and winding queues of customers trying to pay monthly bills.

In an era where banks have automated their services and the government has Huduma Centres, many Kenyans regard the partly private utility provider as the last bastion of inefficiency.

Well, the digital revolution has caught up with Kenya Power and it is only a matter of time before the firm’s service delivery changes for the better if its word is to be believed.

Kenya Power, citing internal analysis conducted between July 2015 and June 2016, has said visits to its halls have been declining since it began decongest its premises a few years ago.

“In the period under review, transactions carried out at halls accounted for only 13.4 per cent of the total transactions, down from 17.7 per cent and 24.58 per cent in the previous two years respectively,” the report states.

The firm has contracted agents to take payments on its behalf as part of its decongestion effort. It says mobile money platforms now accounts for 59.6 per cent of all transactions involving payment for electricity.

“In the previous year, payments through the medium took up 54.8 per cent of all transactions, up from 43.46 per cent in the year ending June 30, 2014.”

Kenya Power attributes the shift to mobile money and the implementation of prepaid metering which it also praises for reduced intrusion into the privacy of customers.

The analysis ranks supermarket vendors second after they took up 20 per cent of the total transactions from 19.7 per cent last year, while banks accounted for seven per cent.