Try This M-PESA Hack To Avoid Transaction Charges When Sending Money!
Going by the statistics released by CAK for the Q1 financial year 2021/22, there are about 34.5 million active mobile money subscriptions spread across the service providers.
Safaricom’s M-PESA which has the largest market share of 34.1 million subscribers in Kenya, is currently Africa’s leading fintech with over 50 million active users across Africa.
The other providers such as Airtel money and T-Kash have garnered subscriptions of 277.1K and 249.7K respectively nationwide.
Despite M-PESA’s dominance and popularity, a section of Kenyans find the platform a bit costly in the long run when it comes to transaction costs.
Consequently, most have figured out ways with which to effect transactions at minimal costs or even at absolutely zero costs.
For example, to send money to another M-PESA number using the M-PESA platform will attract zero charges for amounts below Ksh100.
However, it will cost Ksh6 – Ksh105 ( to send to registered users) and Ksh 45-Ksh 309 ( to send to unregistered users ) depending on the sending amount.
Therefore, one of the ways to avoid said charges is through the use of banks. By default, all Kenyan banks offer paybill options with which customers can use to transfer funds from bank to M-PESA and vice versa.
Since transfers from M-PESA to banks are usually free of charge, one can easily exploit this ‘loophole’ by sending the funds in the M-PESA wallet straight to one’s bank account.
Once the funds are in the bank account, they can then be transferred directly to the recipient’s mobile number without incurring any charges regardless of the amount.
Unfortunately not all banks allow for such convenience therefore, below are the list of banks and their paybill numbers that one can use to send money to another number absolutely free of charge.
- Absa- 303030
- Diamond trust Bank- 516600
- Equity- 247247
- I&M- 542542
- Kenya Commercial Bank- 522522
- National Bank of Kenya- 625625
- Stanbic- 600100
- Stanchart- 329329
