Equity Bank’s digital payment platform, Pay With Equity (PWE), is now the lender’s fastest-growing digital channel. The platform enables mobile subscribers to pay for goods and services to one merchant Till Number. According to Equity’s third quarter financial results, PWE transactions grew by 379% from 15.8 million transactions in the first nine months of 2021 to 75.5 million transactions in 2022.
PWE transaction values also grew threefold (298%) from Kshs 84.1 billion to Kshs 334.6 billion in 2022. The platform is currently free for both users and shoppers. Its interoperability feature allows subscribers to pay from M-Pesa, Airtel Money, Pesalink, Equitel and Equity Mobile. Settlements for PWE transactions are real time and merchants are able to access these funds immediately thus offering more convenience to them.
During the first nine months of the year, 99% of Equity’s transactions happened outside the bank’s branch and ATM network. 805. 4 million mobile and Internet transactions were completed on Equity Mobile and Equity online. In terms of Value, Kshs 835.1 billion and Kshs 256.1 billion were transacted on Equity Mobile and Equity online respectively.
“The value of these digital transactions we are talking about is nearly Kshs 7 trillion, compared to about Kshs 3 trillion from our brick-and-mortar infrastructure. We used to associate digital banking with low value transactions across telcos but that has changed. The value we offer our clients has also changed from just good product to ease and convenience,“ said Equity Group CEO and MD James Mwangi.
Equity attributes this trend to its business transformation, innovation and digitization agenda that is enabling a transition from fixed cost to 3rd party variable cost channels and self-service platforms.
Interestingly, while branch transactions numbers remained fairly unchanged at 14.3 million over a similar period last year, the volumes transacted grew by 34% from Kshs 1,974.1 billion to Kshs 2,639.5 billion indicating that economies are starting to recover from the shocks of the pandemic.
Equity currently has over 17.5 million customers across its 6 banking subsidiaries. Kenya accounts for 12.4 million, Uganda 1.7 million, Rwanda 1.06 million, DRC 1.5 million, Tanzania 571,163 and South Sudan 187, 309
During the last investor briefing, the lender announced that its deposits have now crossed the Kshs 1 trillion mark, hitting Kshs 1.007 trillion as at November 30, 2022. This indicates a daily growth in deposits of over Kshs 330 million (15% growth over 2021).
Equity also boats of the region’s largest balance sheet which now now stands at Kshs 1.4 trillion and is expected to cross the Kshs 2 trillion mark in under 5 years.
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