The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has recently announced the full mobile money interoperability in Kenya. This significant milestone was achieved with the launch of pay bill interoperability—the last step for mobile money merchant interoperability—by three mobile money providers (networks); Airtel Money Kenya Limited, Safaricom PLC, and Telkom Kenya Limited.
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With pay bill mobile money interoperability, customers can now make payments for utilities, schools, businesses, and other service providers, without regard to the network they are on. This complements the till interoperability that was launched on April 8, 2022, which allows customers to make payments at supermarkets, restaurants, and other vendors regardless of the network. In turn, this builds on the person-to-person (P2P) interoperability that was implemented in 2018.
Without full mobile money interoperability, customers were limited to the network they were on in order to make payments and had to resort to alternative methods that were neither customer-friendly nor affordable. Now, for the first time, it will not matter what network a customer, vendor or other biller is on in order to complete a payment directly. This in turn means the elimination of inconveniences and wasteful duplication. The more than 560,000 vendors and billers, and almost 28 million customers will be the ultimate beneficiaries of the seamless payments ecosystem.
CBK has come out to commend the mobile money providers for their cooperation in achieving this milestone. Full mobile money interoperability will facilitate the deepening of the digitalization of payments, increasing choice, affordability, and customer-centricity of payment services, a key outcome outlined in Kenya’s National Payment Strategy 2022/25.
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