As the deadline for the exchange of old Ksh 1,000 notes with the new ones nears, consumers are facing some roadblocks along the way of accessibility to commercial banking branches. People are required to make efforts to go to various points to make the necessary exchanges, therefore, creating inconveniences. M-PESA provides a great opportunity in terms of convenience and accessibility for demonization of the old Ksh 1,000 notes. The ubiquity of M-PESA agents in Kenya makes it very easy to find any of the over 165,000 M-PESA agents across the country to deposit the old Ksh 1,000 and convert the cash into liquid cash in M-PESA.
M-PESA agents allow M-PESA customers who are over 22 million in Kenya to convert hard cash such as the old Ksh 1,000 cash to liquid cash and vice versa. They are then able to use the cash in M-PESA wallet to send the money to other people or make payments. Before M-PESA, people were using bus courier services, friends and relatives, money order etc to send money. M-PESA made the process of sending money more convenient, efficient and trustworthy.
M-PESA creates trust by sending a notification message to both the sender and the receiver of the money, confirming a successful transaction.
Once a customer has deposited money or received money in M-PESA account, they can use it to do daily transactions such e.g pay bills such electricity from Kenya Power, Insurance premium payments, outstanding debt, fuel at a Vivo energy petrol station, Chama contribution, groceries at Mama Mboga’s kiosk etc.
M-PESA is rich with features that allow Safaricom customers to seamlessly carry out transactions from their phones at their comfort. They include Send Money, Lipa na M-PESA, M-PESA AliExpress and saving products such as KCB M-PESA and Mshwari, M-PESA AliExpress. It also has Fuliza which allows customers to complete transactions even if they have insufficient funds.
Using M-PESA pay bill, customers can send money to their bank accounts with over 30 financial institutions after depositing the old Ksh 1,000 notes. M-PESA has the largest agency reach in the county providing the most accessible and convenient way of demonetizing the old KES 1,000 notes.
