There is a new mobile bank product in town courtesy of KCB and Safaricom – the KCB M-PESA Account. This comes after KCB introduced another mobile bank product that they called M-Benki (check out the article All you need to know about M-Benki).
M-Benki was launched to compete with CBA’s M-Shwari, a product that is part and parcel of M-PESA menu. Although M-Benki had better terms and services especially on the amount of loans accessible, the fact that it was operated as an ordinary bank account meant very few Kenyans were enticed to join. A year later, KCB went back to the drawing board to deliberate on how to effectively capture the millions of Kenyans interested in mobile banking. Their deliberation produced the KCB M-PESA Account, a product totally different from M-Benki and a product that attacks M-Shwari head on.
In this article we not only share with you the differences between M-Benki and KCB M-PESA Account, but we also highlight how the new KCB M-PESA Account compares with M-Shwari.
Related Article: M-Benki vs M-Mshwari
M-Benki, M-Shwari and KCB M-Pesa Account
As M-Shwari has been defined as a banking service for M-PESA customers so is KCB M-PESA Account. As the name suggests, KCB M-PESA Account is a bank account for M-PESA users offered by KCB.
M-Benki on the other hand is an ordinary bank account that can be opened by use of M-PESA via the M-PESA’s Pay Bill feature.
When one opens an M-Benki account, he/she is allowed to:
- Deposit at any KCB Mtaani Agent for free.
- Withdraw at any KCB Mtaani Agent (Charges apply).
- Deposit from your M-PESA to your M-Benki account.
The M-Benki has also a few restrictions namely:
- Cheque Deposits
- SWIFT, EFT’s , RTGS
- Maximum daily transaction limit, KShs 140,000/=
These restrictions can be removed by presenting KCB with valid identification documents. Once the valid identification documents have been presented, M-Benki becomes a fully fledged bank account not different from any other ordinary saving account that has been integrated with mobile money.
To say that again, your M-Benki account is an ordinary bank account except that at opening you don’t need to visit a bank to have the account opened. You only need to open it via the M-PESA Pay Bill option. After you have opened the M-Benki account, you will operate it as you would operate any other account (since almost all personal accounts today have an M-PESA integration), and once you present your valid identification documents to KCB, you will face all the hurdles of operating an ordinary account e.g. requirement that you present security to acquire loans.
On the other hand, KCB M-PESA Account is similar in all respects with M-Shwari. You also need to note that both M-Shwari and KCB M-PESA Account exist as Safaricom products but M-Benki is not treated as a Safaricom product at all. M-Benki is purely a KCB product that uses Safaricom platform for some functions.
One immediate difference between KCB M-PESA Account and M-Shwari is the fact that KCB M-PESA Account is absent from M-PESA Menu. To register for and access KCB M-PESA Account, what you need to do is to dial *844# – an easier approach to accessing a service compared to going through several menu options.
The other differences include particular services offered by the two competing products, the amount of loan one is eligible to, maximum loan that can be accessed without security, types of savings in each platform, among other technical and functionality features.
To have a complete understanding of the differences between KCB M-PESA Account and M-Shwari, check out the information that Safaricom has provided in relation to the two products in Page 2.
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kachwanya what’s is M-Benki’s interest rate …can they compete with 7.5% p.m by M-Shwari
Wainainah See Page 2 of the article, they have better interest rates for different packages – as less as 3% per month.
kachwanya I see. na uache kuficha details page 2 kama google search
Wainainah hehehe..sawa
kachwanya Now if only the wananchi were reading tech blogs :)