To deal with the pressure that Mobile Money services put on their market share, banks in Kenya decided to launch in April 2016 the “Real Time Interbank Switch” project. This system should allow money transfers from one account to another across banks, from mobile. However, deadline for launching was missed, not for the first time. Truly, this system was to be launched in November 2015 without suit.

Cited by newspaper The Nation, Chief Executive of Kenya Bankers Association (KBA), Habil Olaka said: “The plan has not been shelved at all, we are just moving step by step and various banks are at various stages of system adjustments to facilitate the project. We are currently carrying out User Acceptance Tests and we will soon start piloting before we roll it out in the shortest time possible (…) This is our own innovation and banks identified the gap in money transfer including the amounts involved as well as costs and that is the solution we intend to provide”

KBA no more wishes to see mobile operators as intermediaries for banking services as it actually is the case when paying a bill or purchasing items for example. “We want to create a convenient way where one can use their mobile phones to buy a newspaper from a vendor by going straight into their bank account and paying using their mobile phones without first withdrawing to an intermediary platform. This should be regardless of where the vendor’s account is,” said Habil Olaka.