The Central Bank of Kenya is breathing a sigh of relief as the integration of mobile money services with banking systems takes shape.

The increase in the number of low-income Kenyans saving money in mobile wallets had raised fears in regulatory circles that the savers could lose their money in case of a systems failure.

The mobile money services are IT-enabled, depending on a mix of software and hardware resources.

The other concern was a liquidity crisis but this is less likely since monetary values in Safaricom's M-Pesa or Zain's Zap are backed by trust funds in commercial banks that are under CBK's watch.

Analysts say the fears rise from uncertainties of security of the new services -- first launched in Kenya after Safaricom came up with the M-Pesa service.

"We are glad that banks are now taking to the mobile banking platform," said Mr Mwaura Nduati, head of national payment systems at CBK.

Equity and Standard & Chartered are some of the banks that have allowed their customers to integrate their bank accounts with the mobile money services.

KCB is working on its own mobile wallet, set for completion next year.

It is expected that people will use the integrated service to push money in their M-Pesa or Zap accounts to their bank accounts and draw from bank accounts to mobile wallets for buying airtime and making utility payments.

Following the integration, value is expected to be reflected in telecoms' systems temporarily as transition money awaiting payment of utilities or transfer to a bank account.

Most of the people saving money in mobile accounts are low-income earners who for long have been out of formal banking, attributed to unfriendly banking policies.

Analysts predict that as more people register for both banking and mobile money services, a lot of interactions between the two platforms will occur but bank accounts will be the preferred store of value.

"Banks were hostile when telecoms firms introduced mobile money services but now they are embracing it," said Mr Nduati.

Technical hitches

Some commercial banks have introduced mobile banking as a value added service, while other have integrated Safaricom's M-Pesa and Zain's Zap to their systems, allowing customers to manage their bank accounts via handsets.

Though the mobile wallets have not led to any losses so far, several technical hitches have kept alive the debate about their security.

From August 1-3, for instance, M-Pesa had a technical hitch during which time subscribers could not withdraw or send money.

Data of most subscribers' accounts were altered.

"I have Sh15,000 in my M-Pesa account but when I tried to withdraw part of it, the system says I have a zero balance and my request is, therefore, invalid, Mr Jonathan Obuya told Business Daily during the service outage.

"I deposited Sh10,000 in my account on Saturday. The Safaricom dealer got a message confirming the deposit but I didn't get one," said Ms Veronicah Kariuki.

The anomaly was however corrected and the value in subscriber's account restored to their earlier figures.

As more banks embrace mobile banking, the mobile money services are expected to have less appeal as savings vehicles but rather retain their usage as convenient tools for sending small mounts of money or paying for utilities.