The Central Bank of Kenya has established new regulations for the country’s mobile funds-transfer market designed to protect consumers and mitigate market risk, a spokesperson for the bank tells PaymentsSource.
Under the new rules, which took effect Feb. 3, payment-service providers that are not licensed banks, financial institutions or authorized electronic-money issuers must have no less than 10 million shillings (US$122,000 or 88,542 euros) in core capital to offer mobile phone-based funds transfers.
In addition, such service providers must establish a mechanism to address customer complaints within 60 days of receiving them.
The rules likely will help to spawn more independent platforms to compete with banking platforms, the spokesperson says. Kenya has a growing mobile-payments market dominated by commercial banks. Of the half-dozen or so bank and mobile operator funds-transfer services available in the country, Safaricom Ltd.’s M-Pesa funds-transfer and payment service is perhaps the best known.
“We see upwards of 2 billion shillings transacted a day on mobile-payment platforms in the country,” the spokesperson says.
Existing payment-service providers have 12 months to comply with the new regulations, according to the central bank.
What do you think about this? Send us your feedback.
