Zain announced plans yesterday to bring its mobile banking service Zap, to all of its 22 operations across Middle East and Africa, with the initial programme being launched in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
Zain has overcome regulatory hurdles in to launch the Zap M-banking service Kenya, and will compete with Safaricom’s M-Pesa service which has five million registered users
The Kuwaiti operator has partnered with leading international and regional banks including Citigroup and Standard Chartered to launch the mobile banking service in the three East African countries.
The service will allow Zap users across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to use their mobile phone to pay bills for goods and services, make remittances to other mobile users or bank accounts, top up airtime, send airtime to other Zain customers within the three countries, and to manage their bank accounts.
“With a potential customer base of over 100 million people in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, many of whom have never had access to formal financial services, we believe Zap will reshape the future of banking in Africa,” stated Saad Al Barrak, CEO of Zain Group.
With yesterday’s launch, Zain has overcome some earlier delays which it faced in gaining regulatory approval for its banking service in Kenya. Earlier this month, Zain Kenya’s CEO Rene Menza stated that the Central Bank was holding up the award of the banking licence to Zain, and as a result the operator was considering legal action, according to local news reports.
Now that Zain has the green light to launch Zap in Kenya, it will face strong competition from market leader Safaricom which not only has market share of 80 per cent, but its highly successful M-Pesa service has been the flagship mobile remittance and banking service in Africa, and has just hit five million registered users. Transactions in Q308 amounted to KES9.6 billion (US$135 million).
Zain, which is the fourth largest mobile network in the world by geographic presence, has not announced when it plans to extend the service to its other subsidiaries.
Image courtesy of GSMA and Decisive Media
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10 comments ↓
At last even after all those stoppers, you have made it and i cant wait for the extension of services to subsidiaries since i plan to be an agent
thats so impresive and we can also enjoy our sending cash people who are connected to zain.i cant wait to be an agent.peace…
Thanks, You have made it,this will help the Zain subscribers to enjoy the service of E -moneying. But i want to be one of those privileged to serve the Zain customers with Zap pesa mkononi, please tell me the application procedure to be a dealer.
To me this is a business opportunity i cant let go,Zai mobile network has never let me down and so am optimistic that ZAP will do me great and earn me gud cash.how do i become an agent.
Well I have seen people disappointed by e-moneying around where I stay and think I have found the solution for them. Please let me know how I can become ZAP pesa mkononi agent?
Congratulations,now I can register for your always good services.
Great… Now we can enjoy e-money. I’d like to serve your customers please tell me how I can become a ZAP Mkononi Agent?
Good news. Extend Zap Mkononi to rural areas so that we can reach you better. I’d like to be an agent. What can I do?
Time has come for us to embrace change….ZAP mkononi has helped milions of Kenyans….Congratulations.
The service is deteriorating. Imagine a problem involving withdrawal of cash taking two weeks to solve.
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