New Safaricom M-PESA charges to take effect tomorrow.

Starting tomorrow July 1 Kenyans will have to dig deeper into their pockets as the new charges for the money transfer service M-PESA take effect.

Safaricom has adjusted its M-Pesa tariffs on the basis of Finance Bill, 2018 and the Provisional Collection of Taxes and Duties Act.

In his budget speech, Treasury CS Henry Rotich proposed a 2% increase on the excise duty charged on service providers. Kenyans will now pay a 12% excise duty on mobile money transactions, up from 10%.

The new charges are between Sh. 1 and Sh. 3 higher.

The telecommunications giant has limited the number of free transactions of below Sh. 100 to three per day meaning that transferring between Ksh.1-100 to other M-PESA users will still remain free.

Thereafter, M-PESA users will pay Sh. 1 for amounts between Sh. 1 and Sh. 49 and Sh. 2 for amounts between Sh. 50 and Sh. 100.

The maximum daily transaction value is Sh. 140,000 while the maximum amount per transaction is Sh. 70,000.

However, Safaricom said that customers will not be able to withdraw less than Sh50 from agents.

Below are the new M-PESA charges:-

Majority of the country’s total subscribers are on Safaricom which makes a total of about 30 million.

Safaricom has managed to retain its position as market leader despite losing 1.2 million subscribers after the Opposition called for a boycott.

The government tapped in the money transfer taxes when it read the Finance Bill – an annual money law that shows how the government will tax its citizens.

The taxing is part of measures to raise over Sh4 billion to fund Universal Health Care.