Why Cashless Mobile Transactions Will Prove a Valuable Weapon Amid Coronavirus Spread Fears

Following the recording of the initial COVID-19 cases in Kenya which had risen to four as of Tuesday, President Uhuru Kenyatta on Sunday announced a raft of drastic measures aimed at containing the spread of the deadly contagion that has since been recognized by WHO as a global pandemic.

Among the measures announced by President Kenyatta included encouraging Kenyans to embrace cashless transactions in order to avoid the risk of transmission through physical handling of money.

It has been found that COVID-19 coronavirus can stay alive on a porous material like paper for up to 10 hours thus making money a highly risky transitive agent that can accelerate the spread of the virus.

"We encourage the use of cashless transactions such as mobile money and credit cards. We appeal to mobile operators and banks to take into consideration the situation, and reduce the cost of transaction," Uhuru said.

Hot on the heels of the President's directive, Safaricom, the leading telco in the country, announced that all person-to-person transactions below Sh1,000 will be free for the next 90 days in order to enable as many Kenyans as possible adopt mobile money transactions.

We sought to find out how this directive has been taken by various stakeholders in the mobile money market and whether it will be of any significance in helping to curb the spread of COVID-19.

"It is definitely a big step towards the right direction because we know besides the usual germs that money is likely to harbour, we now also understand that COVID-19 virus can survive on money for quite a lengthy period of time," a representative from OKash, one of the leading digital lenders in Kenya told 254 NewsDay on Tuesday.

The representative further noted that a cashless economy is the future of transactions in Kenya and the world adding that even after the passing of the coronavirus whirlwind, Kenyans should seek to adopt mobile money transactions more.

"Mobile money transactions are efficient, quick, safe and less tedious as compared to cash transactions. I am actually grateful to Safaricom whom we partner with to wire our digital loans to our borrowers, for waiving charges imposed on person-to-person transactions below Sh1,000," the representative added.

This implies that one can, for instance, borrow any amount of money from OKash ranging between Sh2,000 and Sh50,000, and spend the entire amount while still in his/her M-Pesa wallet at no extra charges provided none of the transactions in question exceed Sh1,000.

OKash Mashinani, another initiative by the same lender partly designed to serve OKash borrowers with limited or no knowledge of how to use the OKash app to borrow loans, will also prove effective among OKash borrowers in rural areas in as far as accelerating of cashless mobile transactions are concerned.