It is the minute that the banking industry in Kenya is facing a lot of challenges specifically on governance issues, leading to a decline on public confidence after few banks were put under receivership.
However, Equity group which has retained for four times, the best overall bank in Kenya in the year 2016, Think Business Awards seems to not understand this vocabulary as it is reflected in its latest quarterly statistics report. The CA shows that the value of transactions processed through Equitel stood at Ksh219.6 billion out of Ksh1.08 trillion that was transacted between July and September 2016, which translates to a 20 per cent market share.
A few factors have attributed to why Equitel would put up a fight or at least rattle the snake and here are some considering the current market regulations and the industry back ground.
Cost of using the services.
If we compare Equitel to the other mobile money transfer services, it’s pretty much affordable and way much cheaper. For instance for you were to send and withdraw ksh 5000 from M-pesa to M-pesa it will cost you both a total to ksh 126 i.e. (ksh 60 to send and ksh 66 to withdraw), while from m-pesa to other networks its ksh 132, However on Equitel its will costs you ksh 60 only for the whole Transaction to other networks. This makes Equitel cheaper than M-pesa.
Market understanding.
Both Safaricom and Equity have grown from a similar approach of providing services up to the doorstep of the customer, by first understanding their market and taking the services to ‘mashinani’ they were able to outdo their competitors and gain dominance. These might give Equitel a fighting chance in the mobile money industry as the approach intertwines with Mpesa.
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Equitel Market Share.
With this numbers it is evident that Equitel is a gamer changer in Equity Group operations and without keen attention by other industry players, such as MPESA, Airtel Money, KCB-MPESA ,Orange Money and others, Equitel is likely to make a huge turnover on digital banking, in that the number of Equitel subscribers now stands at 2.09 million, According to CA’s latest quarterly report further shows that Equitel users carried out 63.9 million transactions in the said quarter up from 56.9 million transactions in the preceding quarter.
Digital Banking.
It is also interesting to note that this statistics that most customers have turned to digital banking as a way of carrying out transactions, and in this case by use of Equitel. The market share in the preceding quarter stood at 14 per cent or Ksh139 billions of Ksh957 billion that was transacted.
Additionally Equitel is strong on the mobile payment market with its EazzyPay platform which is interoperable, meaning it can accept merchant payments from all mobile money transfer services.
