It’s been such a eventful year, not in the most beautiful ways. As you can say it, one of the most unexpected period in our lifetime, but here we are. The Corona virus pandemic came with a bang and it put a lot of stuff into a stand still. Quite a huge number of people lost their sources of income if not jobs and that changed their lives. And because of that, Safaricom has announced new transaction rates for sending and withdrawing money from Mpesa.
Fortunately the government came in to cushion the citizens, also the economy was taken care of. What comes into your mind after that?, isn’t it the largest Telecommunication company in East and Central Africa. That is, Safaricom , because of its large customer base. It has now announced new deduction rates.
Safaricom offers M-pesa as one of the services. So, it made some adjustments to enable Kenyans to send and withdraw money cheaply. They lowered the sending and withdrawal rates of mobile money which is Mpesa. You can remember you were able to send Ksh.1000 for free, thanks to Safaricom’s decisions. This, therefore, decreases the expenses by Kenyans due to the tough economic times.
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Reduced transaction costs
A few days ago the rates were reverted back to the usual charges. Fortunately, they reduced the charges by a certain amount depending on the amount of money you send or withdraw. The new M-Pesa transaction costs are out. Transactions of ksh. 100 and below continue to be free, so you can send that amount or less for free. The other transactions costs of up to Sh. 500 are now down from 11 to 6 shillings. This means that sending money is cheaper compared to the last tariffs. Thanks to the new deduct rates.
One thing to also note is that,
the maximum amount one can transact per day is at Sh. 300,000. That amount is also the same for maximum amount a customer can hold in his/her M-pesa account. After the expiry of zero rated M-pesa transactions, Safaricom has now made new changes. So the new Mpesa transaction rates are in consideration of the expiry of the said period. As announced by the company’s Chief Executive Officer Peter Ndegwa. The new deduction rates will affect about 90% of consumer transactions. That means there is a reduction across almost all of the transactions. You can also look at how to make money online and get paid via MPESA.
It was in March that the Telco giant announced the zero-rating transactions. And as you can note, the reduction is about 45% of the previous rates for the lower transaction bands. Transactions between sh. 1501 to 2500 will now cost sh. 32 from sh. 42. For those transacting between bank accounts and M-pesa, the transactions will continue to enjoy the free services. Therefore, you can transfer your money from a bank account to M-pesa for free unlike before the Coronavirus hit the country. And these price cuts are going to be permanent as from 1st January 2021. What a new year gift for Safaricom and M-pesa customers after such a hard time which almost took a year.
In conclusion,
the changes in M-pesa deduction rates is such a great relief to the customers. Having come from a difficult economic time that will last for quite some time before things eventually come to normalcy. Innovations and new measures are key to a company’s progress and continuity. The aforementioned CEO, Peter Ndegwa made the announcements on Tuesday.