M-Shwari Launches Fixed Deposit Feature

JUNE 17,2014.

Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) and Safaricom have introduced a fixed deposit feature on the globally acclaimed M-Shwari platform dubbed “Lock Savings Account”.

The Lock Savings Account, the first of its kind in the mobile money space, will afford Kenyans an opportunity to save for a specific purpose. The move is aimed at entrenching a savings culture in a country where savings fall below 20% of the GDP, the lowest in the region.

The award winning M-Shwari service was launched at the tail end of 2012 asa micro savings and lending facilitywhoseprimary aim was to bring more Kenyans into the formal financial services fold.

As a testament to its revolutionary nature, M-Shwari has seen CBA’s loan accounts grow by more than 800% from 89,000 in 2012 to 897,000 in December last year making the bank the country’s top retail lender. M-Shwari has over 7M customers who have in the last 2 years transacted more than KES 156 Billion and taken out loans worth KES 13 Billion.

A replica service launched in Tanzania by CBA and Vodacom dubbed M-Pawa, has  registered 250,000 customers in the three weeks it has been in the market; underlying the disruptive power of the M-PESA proposition in the region.