The grace period for Kenyans to enjoy free bank-to-M-Pesa and vice-versa transactions is up.
The Central Bank of Kenya, the industry regulator who had pushed for the free transactions as an industry response to ease the burden of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses and individuals has said as much. The saving grace is that the charges will be back but at a much-reduced rate, thanks to the regulator’s intervention.
The regulator gave the various financial services industry time between its announcement in December 2022 and the end of that month to share their revised rates from the pre-pandemic ones.
Safaricom already shared its revised rates for the re-introduction of M-Pesa-to-bank transaction charges and, now, the other players, like banks, are following suit with the vice-versa (bank-to-M-Pesa) charges.
Here are the National Bank of Kenya’s revised bank-to-M-Pesa charges effective 1st January 2023:
| Transaction bands | Charges |
|---|---|
| 1 - 100 | 0 |
| 101 - 500 | 10 |
| 501 - 1,000 | 12 |
| 1,001 - 1,500 | 14 |
| 1,501 - 2,500 | 23 |
| 2,501 - 3,500 | 33 |
| 3,501 - 5,000 | 43 |
| 5,001 - 7,500 | 55 |
| 7,501 - 20,000 | 60 |
| 20,001 - 150,000 | 67 |
Note:
- While reference is made to M-Pesa in this article, the above rates should also apply to transfers made from the bank to other mobile money platforms in the country like Airtel Money and Telkom’s T-Kash.
- The rates indicated above are inclusive of the 20% Excise duty recently imposed on the transaction charges by the government of Kenya.
