App makes it easy managing your regular bills real time
For most people, a job provides the first and perhaps their primary source of income.
What follows next, however, is an endless outflow of their earnings as one spends on basic needs beside that big night out.
Managing one’s money wisely while also investing, whether in stocks, wealth funds, bonds or property, can help you achieve life goals more quickly – and – even more importantly, allow you to retire earlier.
As the avenues of spending keep increasing, however, tracking your expenditure becomes paramount.
Enter M-PESA App. With over 850,000 downloads and growing, the new platform seeks to better the experience of M-PESA users around the world.
From secondhand clothe dealers in Nairobi’s Gikomba to Kenyans abroad wiring cash back home, the role of M-PESA in enabling businesses and touching millions of livelihoods keeps growing.
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Millions of people turn to M-PESA cash transfer service every minute paying for matatu fares, rent, fuel, fees and what a have you.
Just over a year ago when Covid-19 struck the country, the government made calls for citizens to limit use of cash, a policy shift that was aimed at checking the spread of the disease.
And in an instant, counties, transport companies, manufacturers, financial institutions, utility firms, bars and restaurants, as well as thousands of retail shops went out detailing how customers can transact via mobile money.
Besides sending money and making payments, M-PESA app is configured to help reduce cash reversal requests through its hakikisha (verify) feature just before one enters M-PESA PIN.
Besides, the app is now providing convergence by ensuring that all Safaricom services consolidated into one spot, enabling subscribers to purchase data, and pay for regular bills such as electricity and water while monitoring the outflows.
Through M-PESA app, you can send money by scanning a merchant’s QR code, entering the till number, searching your phonebook contacts or selecting from your frequently used M-PESA bills. The app enables you to wire cash to up to five users a go.
M-PESA global customers also have a reason to smile as they can consolidate and monitor their cash transfers with ease from the new app, which also allows you to view account balance from the home screen.
M-PESA global, the Safaricom service that enables registered customers of the money transfer service to wire and receive money from foreign countries, posted 75.8 per cent growth in the 12-month period ended March from Sh164.78 billion in the prior year.
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M-PESA app also helps interface with third party entities such as banks, utility companies, salons and barbershops, manufacturers, supermarkets among others when making payments for goods and services through tills and pay bill numbers.
In the just released financials for the period ended March, Safaricom’s M-PESA revenue went down by 2.1 per cent to KES82.6 billion from KES84.4 billion in a similar period last year.
The decline is attributable to the telco giant’s move to zero rate money transfer charges in a bid to cushion customers from pandemic woes.
Launched in 2007, tech giant Safaricom has been using M-PESA to launch new services while innovating the existing ones, leading to increased usage and customer satisfaction.
The service, which started as a person-to-person cash transfer platform has over the years changed, opening avenues for payment of business bills, getting loans, wiring and receiving cash from overseas besides providing periodic business analysis to subscribers.
