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.
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