Safaricom and Huawei jointly received the prestigious Most Innovative Service, ‘the Business of Tomorrow’, award at AfricaCom 2019 in Cape Town.
The award recognises the two companies for offering a revolutionary new Mobile Money Overdraft service, known as ‘Fuliza’, which enables users with insufficient funds in their M-PESA accounts to borrow money to complete M-PESA transactions.
The service was officially launched in January and has been gaining popularity in Kenya where Safaricom has over 23.6 million M-PESA users. Kenyans transacted over KES 6.2 Billion (USD 62M) in Fuliza’s first month after its launch.
Michael Joseph, Safaricom’s CEO, said: “M-PESA continues to play a leading role in deepening financial inclusion in the country. Fuliza enriches our mobile financial services portfolio, further fulfilling our promise to always provide customers with relevant products and services that meet them at their point of need. We are glad to partner with Huawei in bringing this commitment to life.”
Fuliza is empowered by the Huawei Mobile Money Finance Overdraft Platform which allows design, development and deployment of innovative finance products. This platform was created to enable credit overdraft facilities in multiple payment scenarios in a highly secure and stable way.
Leo Lu, VP of Huawei Southern Africa Region said: “The award recognises the two companies for offering Fuliza. With Safaricom in Kenya, Huawei has helped implement financial technology in the form of services like M-PESA and Fuliza. These have unlocked a whole new digital economy in the country.”
