19th January, 2018
The near future looks bright for mobile money transfer services in the country, with the government’s announcement that a pilot rollout of interoperability of mobile money transfer services will begin on Monday and run through until the month of March. Once the pilot period is complete, the general public will be able to use the service. Cabinet secretary for information communications and technology, Joe Mucheru, says that the pilot programme was set to begin last year but was postponed due to the heated political climate during elections. Mucheru said the issue of dominance in the mobile money service was the main catalyst for the program. Mobile networks Airtel and Safaricom are the first to implement the pilot and will have to come to a bilateral agreement on how they will work together provide the service. Telkom CEO Aldo Mareuse says there are a few technicalities left to deal with; Telkom Kenya is not too far behind in adapting this new development.