Safaricom cuts Lipa na M-pesa tarrifs by half, announces app

Nairobi, Kenya: Safaricom has announced a number of initiatives that seek to further increase the convenience of M-PESA as it continues to extend the gains of mobile money ten years after its launch in Kenya.

From next week, Safaricom will implement a 50 percent tariff reduction for all Lipa Na M-PESA Buy Goods merchant fees. Under this new Lipa Na M-PESA tariff, merchants will be charged a maximum of 0.5 percent of the transaction amount, down from the previous maximum of 1 percent.

In addition, Lipa na M-PESA merchants will charged a flat fee of Sh200, for any payments above Sh40, 000.

“We trust that this development will boost the attractiveness of the Lipa Na M-PESA platform to more small and medium enterprises while making the service more affordable compared to other alternatives in the market,” said Bob Collymore, CEO, Safaricom.

In addition, the M-PESA Kadogo tariff announced in October 2016 will be expanded for Lipa Na M-PESA Buy Goods to enable merchants to receive all transactions of Sh200 and below at no cost. 

The company also announced availability of M-PESA functionality in the mySafaricom App, which will see the more than 24 million M-PESA customers enjoy the convenience of transacting from their Android and iOS smartphones. 

The app enables customers to select contacts from their phone when sending money and has a vastly improved implementation of the name search function Hakikisha -- which allows the sender to confirm the recipient before the money is sent.