George Njuguna, IT
Director, Safaricom (Middle), Leo Lu, Vice President of Huawei Southern Africa
Region (2nd from left), and Stanley Shen, Director Safaricom KAD at Huawei
Kenya (1st from right) Safaricom and Huawei have jointly received the
prestigious Most Innovative Service “the Business of Tomorrow” award at
AfricaCom 2019 in Cape Town. This award recognizes the two companies for
offering the new revolutionary Mobile Money Overdraft service, known as
“Fuliza”. This service enables users with insufficient funds in their M-PESA
accounts to borrow money to complete their M-PESA transactions. The service was
officially launched in January 2019 and has been gaining popularity in Kenya
where Safaricom has over 23.6 million M-PESA users. Kenyans transacted over KES
6.2 Billion (USD 62M) in Fuliza’s first month after its launch.
Michael Joseph, CEO, Safaricom said “M-PESA
continues to play a leading role in deepening financial inclusion in the
country. Fuliza enriches our mobile financial services portfolio further
fulfilling our promise to always provide our customers with relevant products
and services that meet them at their point of need. We are glad to partner with
Huawei in bringing this commitment to life.”
Fuliza is empowered by the Huawei Mobile Money
Finance Overdraft Platform which allows design, development and deployment of
innovative finance products. This platform was created to enable credit
overdraft facilities in multiple payment scenarios in a highly secure and
stable way. Over the years, Huawei has been working with Safaricom in improving
its mobile financial services and developing new products, especially for loans
and savings which can bring many benefits to individuals but also to SMEs to help
grow their businesses. David Chen, Director of Marketing & Solution Sales
for Huawei Southern Africa Region said: “Financial services require security
and stability. These two elements are in the DNA of all Huawei’s ICT solutions.
We have focused on building a world-class application programming interface
(API) to enable the local ICT ecosystem to tap into M-PESA to serve the needs
of our client for business success and nurture the digital economy from a macro
perspective.” AfricaCom is Africa’s biggest telecoms and technology event which
takes place annually in Cape Town, South Africa. This year, during this 3-day
event Huawei has showcased its end-to-end 5G ability, facilitating the
industry’s digital transformation through innovative tools, platforms and
solutions and exploring new opportunities that are emerging for the industry
from these new technologies.
Source: VANGUARD