Safaricom has struck a partnership with eight more banks with a bid to enable businesses that use Lipa Na M-pesa to transfer funds from their tills to their bank accounts in real time. The new partnership is with KCB, Equity, Jamii Bora, Chase Bank, Cooperative, Diamond Trust Bank, UBA and Consolidated. This brings the total number of banks offering the service to ten considering Stanchart and NIC Bank had started offering the service in July.
According to the Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore, this was a progressive move in their pursuit of creating a Cash Lite financial ecosystem. This was due to the fact that not only does it reduce inherent risks associated with cash handling, it also ensures that the merchants always have access to working capital which definetly improves business efficiency.
This partnership with banks aims to reduce the time taken for merchants to access their funds to a minute or less, any day, any time. Lipa na M-pesa merchants can move between Kshs. 50 to Kshs. 50 million from their tills to their banks without a limitation on the number of transactions that they can make within a day.