Safaricom has introduced new tariffs on its M-Pesa platform by subscribers of Equity Bank’s Equitel mobile payment citing increase in the number of fraudulent incidents. The incidents have been attributed to the fact that customers are enabled to make direct M-Pesa transfers to the M-Pesa accounts of third parties and, therefore, according to Safaricom, it becomes difficult and sometimes impossible to address the requests for redress that are increasingly directed to both Safaricom and the partner’s service centers by their mutual customers.
The increase according to Safaricom will help in weeding out fraudulent transactions to third parties, especially those that are not registered with either M-Pesa or Equitel and is not meant to negatively affect the business or to create negative competition.
In the case where a customer wishes to transfer funds from the bank to his or her M-Pesa account, however, Safaricom has introduced discounted rates of Ksh15 or 15 US cents for amounts ranging from Ksh50 ($0.47) to Ksh1,000 ($9.5) and Ksh22 ($0.22) for amounts between Ksh1,001 ($9.51) and Ksh70,000 ($665.37).
At the same time, tariffs for third party transactions have been increased on a graduated scale from Ksh22 for small amounts falling between Ksh50 and Ksh1,000 to a high of Ksh110 ($1.1) for amounts between Ksh20,001 ($190.11) and Ksh70,000.
Before the new tariffs took effect on August 1, Safaricom was charging a flat rate of Ksh33 (33 US cents) irrespective of the status of the recipient. A check with one of the commercial banks in partnership with M-Pesa for bank to customer transfers showed a higher flat rate of Ksh55 (55 US cents) obtains.