Kwale County has today announced a partnership with Safaricom that will it roll out cashless payments for its 700,000 citizens. This will see all county payments for services such as market fees, cess and parking paid via Mpesa. This will be done via a dedicated paybill number 338500.
The service which went live in February 2019, will see Kwale become the seventeenth devolved unit to adopt and fully integrate cashless payments through M-PESA. In addition to providing an efficient payment channel, the county will also be looking to increase revenue collection by automating the collection and the ability to make payments from wherever the customer is located.
Amos Onduko, Kwale County Executive Committee Member for Revenue had this to say about the partnership, “We are happy to partner with Safaricom to provide citizens with a more convenient way to access our services. This development will boost Kwale County in our ambition to increase the efficiency and accountability of our service delivery.”
Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, Chief Financial Services Officer at Safaricom, had this to say, “This partnership will enable Kwale County to serve its citizens more efficiently by easing the process of making payments. We are also empowering customers to make payments from wherever they are and therefore enabling the County to offer its services remotely and save customers the pain of having to travel to the headquarters.”
According to a report by the GSMA, citizens find benefit in paying for government services through M-PESA as it can reduce costs by more than 75 per cent. This is backed by data from the Central Bank of Kenya, which shows that the mobile phone was the most preferred mode of cashless payment in the country in December 2018, accounting for almost nine of every ten such payments.