MSHWARI SERVICES SUSPENDED

NCBA has said that Mshwari services will be temporarily suspended from Friday to Sunday.

The maintenance will kick off at 11.59 pm on Friday to November 22 at 2.30 pm. “We will be conducting a planned system enhancement on our M-Shwari platform from Friday, during this period, all M-Shwari services will be unavailable.”

Mshwari is run by NCBA Bank together with telecommunication giants Safaricom.

The platform offers subscribers a bank account through mobile phones, enables one to save money for a fixed period, and offers an opportunity for one to move money in and out of the savings account to an M-Pesa account.

Mshwari has disbursed loans to the tune of 430.5 billion shillings in the last seven years with over 450,000.

The pandemic has hit Kenyans hard with millions of Kenyans defaulting on loan payments. In Mshwari defaulters have quadrupled.

“Historically, our NPL ratio has been around 1.8 per cent on M-Shwari. Now we have seen those numbers go up as far as eight per cent,” he said in an interview

The monthly disbursement on M-Shwari doubled from Sh7 billion in September last year to Sh14 billion in December.
However, by June, that number had reduced to Sh8 billion, he said.

Mshwari stopped giving loans of less than 2000 shillings.

Speaking to Business Daily, NCBA Group managing director John Gachora stated that these changes are meant to bring a clear distinction between Fuliza, M-Shwari and Stawi products in which the bank participates.

“M-Shwari serves the critical need for planned credit and the demand for lower ad hoc (impromptu) credit is now better served with Fuliza,” Mr Gachora highlighted in the interview.