Safaricom upgrades Lipa Na M-Pesa with payments card

Safaricom Chief Executive Bob Collymore. (Photo: Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard)

Safaricom has launched a new payment card in a move likely to stoke competition in the electronic payments sector.

The service introduced Wednesday will see consumers pay for goods and services through the M-Pesa 1 tap service at shopping outlets and pay merchants in an improvement to the Lipa Na M-Pesa product.

“We realised that the Lipa Na M-Pesa process, while effective, was still too long as it required eight steps to make a payment and the M-Pesa 1 tap simplifies this process to just one step,” said Safaricom Chief Executive Bob Collymore.

The card makes use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to make payments. Users will only need to tap their cards, a wristband or a phone sticker equipped with NFC chips and they will receive an SMS notification requesting their approval of the transaction.

National rollout

Safaricom launched the service in Nakuru, which it said has one of the fastest-growing populations of merchants, with a national rollout expected in the next few weeks.

“Customers will be able to complete Lipa na M-Pesa payments without showing confirmation messages to tellers,” said the firm’s regional sales director Steve Okeyo.

He said the service will also reduce errors that occur when payments are made to the wrong till numbers and make it safer and more private when paying for goods and services.

“Once you tap on the POS (point of sale) the phone requests for the M-Pesa PIN and once you enter your pin the transaction is completed,” said Mr Okeyo.

“Unlike the previous process which had delays, transactions done with this new technology are completed within seconds,” he added.