I remember the first time I joined a chama. I had just started my first job and wanted to get into the saving habit before I got used to spending all my salary. I had also just started living in my first little house and I had so many things to buy. Being in a chama presented a perfect opportunity to hit both these birds with one stone. It was a workplace affair with about 10 people at any one time, each contributing 2,000 at the end of the month. Together with other forms of saving, one was able to purchase the first household items and have some spare money to themselves.
I’ve seen how these collaborations in other places other than work places and especially even in the villages where both men and women are able to come together, invest in each other’s strength, start businesses with the proceeds of their collaboration and prosper.
One of the major problems that has always plagued these chamas, and even investment groups and SACCOs is the hassle of opening joint bank accounts and being able to operate them according to their constitutions. Signatories have always had to be present to sign off payments and other transactions and for people in jobs and busy lives, it is not always easy to get all signatories together at one time. After all, people have different schedules and syncing them to be at the bank together is often a tall order.
Enter Equity Bank and the recently launched suite of digital products, Eazzy Banking. These products have come to make banking merge seamlessly into our lifestyles as opposed to banking being a chore which many of us obviously don’t look forward to. Among the products within the EazzyBanking suite is EazzyChama, which like all the other products came about as a result of the bank listening to its customers and coming up with solutions to ease their lives and still have them transact safely and securely. Transparency is also assured.
EazzyChama is set to help clients and joint account holders especially to manage group activities without necessarily having to meet. This offers more flexibility and control of their time, which allows them to do concentrate on their businesses more without having to set aside time for banking. EazzyChama will cater for more than just chamas, but also investment groups, clubs as well as SACCOs.
One of the things that groups will need to operate EazzyChama is an Equitel line, which they can use to conduct transactions by use of secret PINs. I’m really liking the fact that signatories do not have to leave their busy schedules to meet and sign cheques or do other businesses. This opens lots of boundaries for group transactions.