KCB Bank, Equity and ABSA have reckoned CBK to reinstate charges on transfers of money between bank accounts and mobile money wallets, citing heavy investments in digital technology to keep pace with growing transactions.
The banks said the waiver of fees on bank-to-mobile phone transactions triggered an increase in transactions, leading to micro and small-sized businesses embracing the digital channels
Previously, the lenders used to charge between kes 30 to kes 197 before the waivers were introduced by the regulator in mid-March 2020 as a way to cushion the economy against the effects of coronavirus.
“Banks have invested a lot and if you look at the transaction throughput, it is up 50 % to 500 million transactions on our digital channels last year. This requires a lot of investment in terms of throughput, back-end and system processing,” KCB Group chief executive Joshua Oigara.
Transactions on KCB digital channels such as mobile banking increased by nearly half to 496 million last year on the resumption of economic activities, KCB reported. Revenue on digital channels, however, fell a further 5.9 % to kes 9.0 billion from kes 9.6 billion in 2020 and nearly kes. 11.5 billion in 2019.
On the other hand, Equity Group reported non-branch transactions last year jumped 47 % to kes 1.14 billion, a trend that was also reflected at Absa Bank Kenya.
“We saw the volume of transactions shoot up whether it was M-Pesa (or)…bank-to-bank…When you are investing in a mobile platform it is based on a return. The thing that is causing a little worry is that if it stays for long we are going to see innovation and services coming out of the platform reduce.” Absa Kenya chief executive Jeremy Awori.
Last year, CBK rejected bankers’ push to reinstate fees on the transfer of cash between accounts and mobile phone wallets at the end of 2021 when it ended free M-Pesa transactions of up to kes 1,000.
