The Kenya Power & Lighting Company Limited, Kenya’s electricity distributor has said it will introduce mobile money-based prepaid meters for its electricity customers in the new financial year.
This follows the company’s survey that found that over 70% of the total prepaid electricity clients prefer to use their mobile phones to buy electricity tokens than any other outlet.
The survey which was carried out among its at 340,000 prepaid electricity clients also found M-Pesa is most popular facility accounting for 95 percent of all mobile based prepaid purchases while just 25 percent of prepaid customers prefer to use third party vendors and supermarket outlets while about 5 percent make their purchases from the Kenya Power banking halls monthly.
The electricity company said it has also intensified the implementation of the prepaid metering project and is expecting to sign up nearly 520,000 customers by the end of the financial year.
According to the firm’s Chief Engineer in charge of Prepaid Metering, Eng. John Wekesa, “Besides convenience, use of the prepaid system helps our customers to take control of their electricity consumption patterns, thereby promoting energy efficiency. For the Company, the prepaid system will reduce intrusion into the privacy of our customers while also assisting us in reduction of our operational expenses.”
With demand going up, Kenya Power said it is targeting small and medium sized customers who consume not more than 2,000 units per month to migrate to prepaid meters beginning the next financial year.
