Kenyan operators prepare for money money interoperability tests

Kenya's telecommunication firms are expected to begin trialing mobile money transfers from one network to the other from January, reports Business Daily. Safaricom said that the companies had signed the requisite agreements to set up interoperability and that a pilot phase was expected in the third week of January. CEO Bob Collymore said necessary interoperability agreements have been executed between the mobile operators and at the moment, all operators are in the final stages of aligning their systems to facilitate the roll-out of the service. 

A spokesperson from Airtel Kenya did not provide exact dates but said that the discussions were in progress and that "hopefully everything will be concluded in early 2018". 

In 2017, Collymore said that the operators had agreed to set up a fund from which they would draw to settle debts incurred in cross-network transactions. He also said that the companies had agreed not to pay interconnection fees for terminating transactions on each other’s network as they do when subscribers make cross-network phone calls. 

A consultant hired by the Communications Authority of Kenya in 2017 proposed that operators implement mandatory interoperability by the end of 2017, failing which Safaricom would be split from its mobile money business as a remedy to the lack of competition in the sector.