Barclays Bank’s Timiza mobile app has registered 2.7 million customers barely a year after its introduced in Kenyan market.
The app, which allows customers to access instant loans, deposit funds, pay bills, buy airtime, and purchase insurance for as low Ksh42 for a Ksh50,000 cover, has been downloaded 1.7 million times from Google Playstore since it was launched.
Kenyans with feature phones have also been able to access Timiza services through the USSD code *848#.
Moses Muthui, Barclay’s head of strategy, says Timiza’s success augurs with the bank’s strategy to diversify its service platforms and expand its market share within five years.
“Most of the virtual players globally will succeed and fail in equal measure, they require a lot of capital investments, there is regulation wrapped around it, there is the philosophy aspect where you wrap around with your customers where they come along with you or they are portable among virtual banks. Barclays bank has considered all those scenarios, we like what we have and our investment plan and we are going to get our market share in the next five-seven years,” he said.
