The National Bank of Kenya (NBK) and one of the leading digital money transfer services in the world, WorldRemit have entered into a partnership that will look to help Kenyans in the diaspora to make transfers back home much easier.
The partnership will enable users of WorldRemit to make deposits straight to NBK accounts irrespective of whether they are held in Kenyan shillings or in US dollars. It also allows the users to be able to send money, which can be picked up from across the bank’s extensive branch network in terms of Kenya shillings.
Ismail Ahmed, founder and CEO at WorldRemit, said, “We are delighted that this partnership will enable us to offer an enhanced service to our Kenyan customers. They can now transfer funds to NBK accounts quickly, to be paid out in shillings or dollars. It’s a welcome expansion of our fast, safe and lower cost online service which has already proved so popular with Kenyans.”
In addition, Wilfred Musau who is the National Bank chief executive officer and managing director said, “Our new partnership with WorldRemit is part of the bank’s commitment to increasing banking convenience for our customers abroad. We understand that speed and convenience are key to our diaspora customers, and we are providing these options at a low price through our new partnership with WorldRemit.”
With a large number of the population still being unbanked, mobile money services have become more popular to a point they are able to compete with banks. Henceforth, the joint venture will look to re-energize the banking industry through remittances as according to the Central Bank of Kenya, there has been a year on year increase in terms of remittances. The amount of money sent from the diaspora had increased by 11% from Sh159.82 billion in 2015 to Sh177.34 billion in 2016, becoming Kenya’s largest source of foreign exchange, ahead of key industries such as tourism and horticulture.
This partnership comes after the fully fledged listed commercial bank recently rolled out diaspora banking which allowed customers to bank in multiple currencies. With WorldRemit having completed almost Sh2 million money transfers to Kenya and with more than 80,000 transactions every month, the bank will be able to reach more people thus increasing its clientele.
