This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Library
Africa turns to mobile payments as a tool to curb COVID-19
Africa is using digital finance as a means to stem the spread of COVID-19.
Governments and startups on the continent are implementing measures to shift a greater volume of payment transactions toward mobile money and away from cash — which the World Health Organization flagged as a conduit for the spread of the coronavirus.
As COVID-19 cases began to grow in the continent’s major economies last week, Africa’s leader in digital payment adoption — Kenya — turned to mobile-money as a public-health tool. The country’s largest teleco, Safaricom, implemented a fee-waiver on East Africa’s leading mobile-money product, M-Pesa, to reduce the physical exchange of currency in response to COVID-19. The company announced that all person-to-person (P2P) transactions under 1,000 Kenyan Schillings (≈ $10) would be free for three months.
The move came after Safaricom met with the country’s Central Bank and per a directive from Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta “to explore ways of deepening mobile-money usage to reduce risk of spreading the virus through physical handling of cash,” according to a release provided to TechCrunch from Safaricom.
- Resource type Case Study
- OrganisationTechcrunch
- Year of Publication2020
- RegionAfrica
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pagesNA
- Keywords COVID-19, Mobile Banking