Digital payment - Afrikan Heroes

Interswitch Plugs Into Kenya’s Large Sacco Market With New Partnership

August 4, 2021

Interswitch Group, an Africa-focused technology-driven payments company, has announced a partnership with K-Unity Sacco to provide secure digital payment services to the savings and credit society’s more than 100,000 members.

Sacco’s mobile app, Unicash, has been connected with the electronic payment company’s bulk payment platform Autopay. It has made its Autopay web gateway available to the Sacco.

Interswitch and Sacco sign a digital payment agreement

“Effectively, K-Unity Sacco members can disburse payments to different accounts and mobile wallets. Members who are also SMEs and small businesses will be able to make payments on the web portal,” said Interswitch Group country manager Romana Rajput.

Sacco’s manual checkout procedure has also been automated by the IT business, allowing members to initiate, review, authorize, and monitor payment operations digitally.

“All Sacco members will thus be able to disburse massive payments through Autopay to different bank accounts and mobile money wallets any day, including weekends and holidays, at any time (24 hours a day, 7 days a week)” said K-Unity CEO Simon Njenga.

A Way Of Beating Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority’s Recent Regulatory Requirement

The move to partner with K-Unity SACCOs is one smart way of removing too much regulatory oversight on the company from the Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority, in charge of regulating the operations of saccos in Kenya. The body recently introduced the Sacco Societies (Non-Deposit-Taking Business) Regulations, 2020.

The regulations, among other things, demand that anybody operating any form of savings and credit co-operative societies (Saccos) in Kenya, whether physically or digitally, must comply with new regulations and accordingly procure a license by June 30, 2021.

Interswitch SACCO Kenya Interswitch SACCO Kenya

Digital SACCOs Operators In Kenya Must Register Under New Regulations

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer

Digital Payment Will Aid Financial Inclusion

October 17, 2019

Few will argue against using digital payment systems to improve access to financial services for the 1.7 billion unbanked people in the world, but there are risks that regulators will need to check before allowing such innovation is launched on a massive scale, says Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England (BoE) at a seminar on Big Tech and the Future of Finance at the annual meetings of the IMF/World Bank.

Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England (BoE)

Most central banks, he notes, are behind the digital financial innovation curve and as such, would need to step up their game to mitigate risks that may lurk in such good ideas. “New innovations in digital financial services are in positive themselves. However, good ideas can create unintended problems in other areas,” he says.

The BoE Governor cautioned against stifling innovation, but instead advised central banks to put in place regulatory guiding principles. It is still far too expensive, he says, for people to send money across borders and even domestically. For efficiency sake, Fintechs and digital payment systems can be of help.

India is a global leader in digital payment system, according to Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and chairman of Infosys Technologies, thanks to development of an inter-operable, open access digital payment architecture that covers 100 percent of the population. Digital payment, he adds, requires a smart phone to store data, however, the Indian model made provision for those without smartphones and even those without phones. Several countries are already looking to emulate the model, he claims.

A key worry over big tech’s inroad into digital payment system is the need to keep them from building dominant platforms and becoming monopolies, according to Jason Furman, Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

“The Ethos of ‘break things and repair them later’ doesn’t work for the global financial system,” he says.

David Marcus, Facebook’s head of Calibra, its yet-to-be-launched digital wallet, says its firm is sampling regulatory concerns before it launches next year.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.