March 2009

New delivery channel to compliment PesaPoint Network

Presently agents in Nairobi, Rift Valley, Eastern and Coast provinces are signed up to the PesaPoint POS network.

Introducing this new service delivery channel, Bernard Matthewman, PesaPoint Managing Director said “ATMs need a fairly large local population and reasonably high degree of economic activity to sustain them and we have been looking at cost effective ways to deploy our footprint more widely.  Our POS terminals deployed, within carefully selected agents, have given us the ability to significantly extend our reach. This means more points of presence in the existing 46 towns in which we are located but even more importantly gives us the ability to reach hundreds of new towns and rural locations.”

He added that PesaPoint will gradually align services on the POS network with those on the ATMs. Currently the POS terminals sell prepaid airtime from Safaricom, Zain, and Telkom with Orange to be available in the coming weeks. Cash withdrawals, loan payments, purchases and bill payments will be added in the next few months.

‘We have to be careful that we do not swamp agents with too many new transaction types at once’ said Matthewman.
The POS terminals are light weight with back up battery power of up to 6 hours. They are also Web-enabled, which makes remote training and operation possible, as well as inventory tracking across geographically-dispersed locations.

Airtime purchase and bill payments on the POS network are on a cash or card basis, allowing both banked and unbanked customers to access the services. In conclusion,
Mr. Matthewman noted that the POS network is meant to compliment the current PesaPoint ATM network, viability of a location being the determining factor on the channel to be deployed.

Signed up agents include establishments such as petrol stations, hotels, restaurants and business individuals meeting set criteria.