Kenyans borrowed up to Sh19.9 billion worth of airtime through the Safaricom Fuliza overdraft programme during the four months to March this year, pointing to a growing over-reliance on credit facilities amid biting economic times.
In its latest sustainability report, Kenya’s giant telco indicated that since opening the lines of credit to enable customers to use Fuliza to buy airtime via the mobile money platform M-Pesa on November 24 last year, an additional Sh19.9 billion in the overdraft service turnover had been unlocked as at the close of the fiscal year on March 31 this year.
“We opened lines of credit by enabling customers to use Fuliza to buy airtime via M-Pesa. Since the implementation of the service on 24 November 2022, an additional Sh19.86 billion in additional Fuliza turnover was unlocked,” wrote Safaricom in the report.
Launched in 2019, the Fuliza overdraft service allows M-Pesa customers to complete their transactions when they have insufficient funds in their mobile wallets.
Safaricom says that during the year under review, it revised the fees charged on the service by 50 percent in an effort aimed at making credit more affordable, a move that led to a significant increase in transaction volumes, values as well and subscribers.
The Fuliza airtime service is an alternative to Safaricom’s airtime overdraft facility Okoa Jahazi which allows users to borrow airtime when running on a low balance.
The two are further complemented by the ‘reverse call’ service that allows callers to transfer the cost of the call to the receiver.
To make a reverse call, a customer keys in ‘#’ before the number they want to dial. A customer receiving a reverse call request sees the caller’s details appear on the screen as normal, but once they pick up the call, they receive a voice prompt asking them to key in ‘1’ to accept the reverse call.
The receiver is then charged for the call at the normal call rates.
In the latest report, Safaricom says that the number of reverse calls made by customers almost doubled in the year under review to 130 million, up from 73 million in the previous year.
