Safaricom’s Fuliza Lands in Tanzania

An M-Pesa overdraft service similar to Fuliza in Kenya has been introduced in Tanzania by Vodacom, Safaricom’s sister firm.

The mobile service dubbed ‘Songesha’ will enable Vodacom subscribers in Tanzania to complete their M-Pesa transactions even without enough funds in their mobile accounts.

Songesha users will have an 18-day timeline to pay up, and can only make one request which attracts an interest of one percent at a time.

Vodacom has partnered with TPB bank in order for the Songesha mobile services to be effective.

“We have partnered with TPB so that the bank is able to use algorithms based on M-Pesa transactions and make the overdraft service possible,” said Vodacom Director of M-Commerce Epimack Mbeteni.

Safaricom introduced a similar M-Pesa overdraft service in Kenya, famously known as ‘Fuliza’ in January 2019 and had 4.2 million users within the first three months of introduction.

Before Safaricom introduced Fuliza in Kenya, the firm had noticed that their subscribers had lots of cancelled transactions because they lacked funds to complete the transactions.

The data indicating failed transactions prompted the telecommunication firm to introduce a friendly service that would allow their customers to get instant loans even without sufficient funds.

Since its introduction in Kenya in January 2019, Fuliza services have continued to attract more Safaricom users, that the telco firm wants to introduce similar overdraft services to six other countries, including Tanzania, Ghana, DR Congo, Lesotho and Mozambique.

The M-Pesa overdraft service usually partners up with a local bank in a country, so that its subscribers receive top-up loans whenever they want to make transactions.

In the countries where Safaricom intends to introduce the top-up loans services, the number of M-Pesa subscribers increased by 227,000 customers in a period of three months making the number of customers get to 13.4 million by December 2018.

According to Vodacom, M-Pesa usage outside Kenya and South Africa has helped boost the firm’s revenues of operations by up to 13.2 percent.

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