Hands up if you mostly operate M-Pesa in the dark. I don’t mean literal dark as in lack of light but dark in terms of never really getting round to checking what you’re spending in all those transactions you make. I use M-pesa at around 3 times a week and I’m a culprit on this one. Not that I don’t care about my spending. I really have no reason for this habit. Its just one of those things.
M-Pesa is now making things much easier for the likes of me and in deed all users to be aware of and monitor their transaction costs by enabling them to receive information on the cost of each transaction. This development is in line with the recommendations of the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) which is mandated with promoting and protecting effective trade practices.
The new updates will be available to all 24 Million M-Pesa users and will be rolled out in three phases starting this week. In phase 1, customers will receive notifications on charges paid for as part of the M-Pesa confirmation message. Phase 2 will see customers receive a pop up message informing them of transaction charges prior to making the transaction. In phase 3, the service will be made available to value added M-Pesa financial products including M-Shwari, Okoa Stima, M-Tiba and KCB M-Pesa. Phase 2 and 3 will be rolled out in the course of the coming months.
I’m loving the improvements that M-Pesa is making to enhance the customer experience and pricing transparency. This new development joins others like Hakikisha where customers are able to see the name of the person they’re transacting with prior to completing the transactions, and M-Pesa kadogo which scraps charges for transactions under 100 bob.
The changes are part of the enriched second generation M-Pesa system which was implemented in April 2015. In addition to increasing M-Pesa’s transactions capacity, the new system has improved system stability, enabled the support of more features and the roll-out of new features on the system.