Safaricom now seeks to increase M-Pesa daily limit

Telecommunications giant Safaricom has began talks with the Central Bank of Kenya to review the limit imposed on mobile money transfers.

According to Safaricom, the call to increase maximum limit will give customers an opportunity to transact larger mobile amounts.

“We are engaging with central bank and I hope they will consider our application favourably….because it is the cry of Kenyans to transact more,” said Safaricom Chief Customer Officer Sylvia Mulinge.

Currently, the maximum amount a customer can send in one transaction is Ksh.70,000, with the maximum daily limit pegged at a Ksh.140,000.

Users on the other hand can only hold upto a Ksh.100,000 in their M-Pesa account. The platform addition handles more than seventeen million transactions daily.

“But if you look at volume of transactions oversees, people send between 100 to 500 dollars daily, so we are not feeling that the current limit is curtailing us, but as people get opportunities to send more, the higher the limit the better the opportunities,” added Ms. Mulinge.

According to the Communications Authority of Kenya, Ksh.1.9 trillion worth of transactions happened on mobile money platforms in the period between April and June 2018.

Out of this, M-Pesa handled Ksh.1.5 trillion worth of transactions. This included Ksh.556 billion person to person transactions it also handled.

In the half year results released last week on Friday, Safaricom posted an 18.2 per cent jump in M-Pesa revenues to hit Ksh.35.5 billion. Customers using the service grew by eight percent to reach Ksh.20 million.

Mulinge spoke during the launch of M-Pesa global, a service in partnership with Western Union, to enable customers send and receive money from across the world via a mobile phone.