The Airtel Money card, the debit card by Airtel, can now make online payments. The card, which is linked to an Airtel Money account, could previously only be used at point of sale systems and VISA enabled ATMs in Kenya and overseas.
The card was launched in Kenya in February 2014 and is powered by Chase Bank. The Chase Bank connection is the reason that the card hasn’t worked in a while. The bank, being in receivership, had to scale down on some of its operations. It activated its customers cards’ online payment feature recently.
[Also read: A Lipa na M-PESA debit card is apparently in the pipeline]
A debit card linked to mobile money is awesome but the lack of an online payment feature probably stunted the uptake of the Airtel Money card. Airtel’s competitor Safaricom plans to launch their own card that will be linked to M-PESA. Seeing that Airtel has already gone the online way, that will probably push Safaricom in that direction as well.