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Safaricom is in talks with Amazon over the use of its mobile money service M-Pesa on Amazon’s eCommerce platform. This move is said to be part of the Kenyan telco’s efforts to recover from a year of disappointing profits.
“M-Pesa accounts for about a third of Safaricom’s revenue, and East Africa’s largest company sees the financial-technology product as the key to future growth. The carrier already has partnerships with a unit of China’s Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. and PayPal Holdings Inc.”
This isn’t the first time these two giants have partnered, “as the two already partner on web services, and the Kenyan company runs cloud sales for Amazon”.
The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) has approached Parliament with new laws that would require the country’s telco’s – mainly Safaricom – to share their private infrastructure on a commercial basis.
“The authority’s view is that ab initio infrastructure provisions in the sector should have been separated from the mobile network operators. Primarily regulations should have been developed to ensure that third parties provide the infrastructure. Unfortunately, this did not happen,” says CAK Director-General, Francis Wang’ombe Kariuki.
“It is with this reality that we opine regulations should be promulgated and enforced in regard to infrastructure sharing on a commercial basis and in case of dispute, the sector regulator [Communications Authority of Kenya] may act as the arbiter.”
According to Business Daily, Safaricom has the broadest national coverage, was the first to launch the cutting-edge 5G technology and has been spending more than Sh30 billion each year on its infrastructure – more than any of its competitors.
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