In a day Kenyans ‘Fuliza’ Kshs 1.2 Billion.
Safaricom Fuliza’s mobile overdraft service now generates more revenue for the mobile company than its M-Shwari loan service, less than three years after the launch of Fuliza. Data from the company’s recent Sustainable Business Report shows that Kenyans borrowed 351 billion shillings from the company’s overdraft facility in the financial year 2020/2021, a 43% increase from 245 billion shillings from the previous year.
This is a small amount compared to the 94 billion shillings that the mobile company lent through M-Shwari in the same period, a 27 percent decline from 129.6 billion shillings last year.
The number of active M-Shwari users also decreased by 15% to 3.9 million during the audit, from 4.6 million users last year. Safaricom said in the report. .
The Fuliza overdraft service is currently processing more than 1.2 billion shillings a day, in figures for the first half of this year, while the service moved to 220.38 billion shillings, a 25% jump compared to 176 billion shillings in the same period last year.
M-Shwari’s revenue, on the other hand, stood at 2.2 billion shillings at the same time, while the average loan value increased by 26 percent to shillings 5,575. Safaricom launched Fuliza in January 2019 as an overdraft facility that allows M-Pesa users to do business when they run out of money in their M-Pesa mobile wallets. M-Shwari was launched in 2012.
Customers automatically pay for additional Fuliadrafts when depositing or receiving money on their M-Pesa. This offers a 100% refund rate compared to M-Shwari and KCB M-Pesa, where customers are asked to refund.
According to the telephone company’s Sustainable Business Report, the company contributed 557 billion shillings to the economy in the financial year 2020/2021, or 5.2% of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP). The report further states that the company provided 190,273 indirect and indirect jobs during the year and more than a million jobs if a major impact on the economy was included.
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