Kenyans Are Borrowing Ksh 55 Million Per Hour From Fuliza

By Juma / Published November 11, 2021 | 9:15 am

KEY POINTS

Kenyans have been borrowing 1.32 billion shillings per day from Fuliza. This means Kenyans have been borrowing 55,000,000 shillings per hour from Fuliza, 916,666 shillings per minute, and 15,277 per second.

Stats from the recently-released financial results by Safaricom show that the company disbursed 242.6 billion shillings in 183 days. This was a 62.4 percent increase from last year where the company loaned 149.4 billion shillings through Fuliza.

Fuliza is an overdraft facility dubbed that allows M-Pesa customers to send money or pay for goods and services even with insufficient balances in their accounts. Its unique model of recovering the money, where cash is automatically deducted from M-Pesa has made it difficult for people to default.

The number of Kenyans borrowing from Fuliza stands at 1.7 million with a 99 percent repayment rate. This made it the best-performing in terms of repayment rate as per the results released by the giant telecommunications company.

During the period, it earned Safaricom 2.8 billion shillings in revenues, an increase of 32.2 percent from 2.1 billion shillings last year. Fuliza loans above 2,500 shillings attract a fee of 35 shillings per day while those between 1,500 and 2,500 attract 30 shillings per day.

The popularity of Fuliza among Kenyans seems to be killing other M-Pesa affiliated products such as KCB M-Pesa and M-Shwari. KCB M-Pesa had a repayment rate of 98.6 percent while that of M-Shwari stood at 63.5 percent.

At the same time, Kenyans who default on Fuliza repayment will now have their KCB M-PESA and M-Shwari accounts blocked, or their balances used to repay the overdraft.

According to the new set of terms and conditions, Safaricom will hold onto the user’s funds on the two accounts as collateral or security for any Fuliza loans lent and defaulted.

About Juma

Juma is an enthusiastic journalist who believes that journalism has power to change the world either negatively or positively depending on how one uses it.(020) 528 0222 or Email: info@sokodirectory.com

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