Kenyan telco Safaricom is slashing its transaction fees for low value person-to-person payments made using its wildly popular M-Pesa mobile money service.
From this week, M-Pesa's 19.3 million users will see the cost of making a payment of between 10 shillings and 1500 shillings fall by 67%. Around two thirds of all transactions are in this range.
Bob Collymore, CEO, Safaricom, says: "It is our belief that by lowering the cost of these transactions we will provide an increased number of Kenyans with affordable access to basic financial services."
The price drop comes as M-Pesa faces up to a challenge to its long-held dominance of the Kenyan mobile money market.
Earlier this year, Equity Bank was granted a mobile virtual network operator license and is now preparing to launch paper-thin SIMs that can be stuck to existing SIMs to enable payments.
According to ITWeb Africa, this week the Communications Authority of Kenya will hear a complaint by Safaricom against Equity alleging the plans put customers at risk of fraud.