Telkom and Airtel will have access to Mpesa’s pay bill one year after Till – Safaricom

As the telecoms combine for cross-platform mobile interoperability, Telkom and Airtel would have to wait a year to use Mpesa’s Pay Bill money services.

This is a follow-up to the successful implementation of mobile money interoperability, which allowed consumers to send and receive money from any network in the country. Safaricom says that once the industry has absorbed crucial lessons from how the current innovation is progressing, pay bill interoperability should be the next step.

Safaricom has enabled Airtel and Telkom Kenya members to pay for goods and services using Mpesa’s till number thanks to the interoperability mechanism.

This is a 2018 innovation by Kenya’s Central Bank in order to create secure, rapid, efficient, and collaborative payment systems.

It also aims to duplicate the link between Airtel Money and M-Pesa by bringing together those who work in the payments industry.

While cash remains a popular method of payment, Kenyans do over 37.6 million transactions worth Sh176 billion every day via non-cash channels such as mobile money, cards, electronic bank transfers, and checks, according to CBK data.

According to Telkom, the introduction of merchant interoperability moves the telecommunications provider closer to a cashless economy, boosting an already-smooth digital transaction ecosystem that gives consumers additional options.

Peter Ndengwa, Safaricom CEO says that the partnership is based on the successful introduction of mobile money interoperability.