Telkom Kenya launches mobile money service to take on Safaricom's M-Pesa

Telkom Kenya has finally launched its long awaited mobile money services dubbed T-Kash, after more than two-years of developing it and sinking Sh1 billion ($10M) in the process.

T-Kash which replaces Orange Money which was discontinued as part of the company’s rebranding and new strategic direction promises its customers reliability, value and convenience with an initial outlay of 20,000 agents in urban centres.

Speaking at the launch of T-Kash, Telkom Chief Executive Officer Aldo Mareuse says the new mobile money platform will provide Kenyans with a viable option in a market currently dominated by Safaricom’s M-Pesa.

“T-Kash is a key feature of our product offering. By having a mobile money platform, which we believe is a superior product, we expect to see an acceleration of our growth,” said Mareuse.

According to the Communication Authority’s quarter one report, 22.7 million out of the 28 million mobile money subscribers are M-Pesa customers.

Telkom is however optimist it will clip M-Pesa growth and is buoyed by its recent rebranding and enhanced marketing activities which has seen the telco gain 1 million customers nine months after private equity firm Helios bought Orange Group’s 60 percent stake.

Director of Mobile Financial Services at Telkom, Anuj Tanna, said the platform will inject transparency in the transactions by allowing users to see the cost of transaction before completing the process.

Additionally, the mobile platform aims to cut the ‘buy goods’ process by doing away with till numbers and replacing it with instantly generated codes by customers.

The code is presented to a merchant or an agent who counterchecks the T-Kash Code on the vendor side.

Information, Communication and Technology Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru said the government will continue to encourage healthy competition in the telecommunications sector.

“Competition is not just about breaking people down. It is also about growing the size of the market…in all the talks we have had with the operators, their aim is to grow their sector, and we can assure you that we will see a bigger, better telecommunication’s market as we go on,” said Mucheru at the unveiling of T-Kash.

T-Kash is expected in the next few months to join M-Pesa and Airtel Money in the pilot phase of mobile money interoperability project that aims to lower barriers to transacting across different mobile networks.