Equity Bank has hit criticised Safaricom over its continued refusal to open up the M-Pesa platform to enable its users transact business with other mobile money networks.

The commercial bank said this has kept the cost of mobile money transaction high and may hinder further growth in the mobile commerce in Kenya.

Equity Bank joins the other mobile operators, Airtel and Essar Telecom, who have been pushing for cross network operations in mobile money business.

"Financial services by nature should be inter-operable," said John Staley, chief officer for finance, innovation and technology at Equity.

"Kenya has not seen much of this as one of the operators has tried as much as possible to be on a closed loop,"Stanley said.

He spoke during the launch of an M-banking solution in partnership with Airtel. The service, available to all Equity Bank customers with Airtel lines, will enable customers access mobile banking platforms, perform agency cash transactions, enable Airtel Money customers to withdraw at the Bank branches, pay utility bills among other functions.

Equity is now in partnership with all the four mobile money transfer platforms. Its M-Kesho partnership with Safaricom, which was the first mobile bank account, failed to impress and ended up with low numbers.

Safaricom later partnered with Commercial Bank of Africato set up another mobile bank account dubbed M-Shwari. The Bank CEO James Mwangi said transactions would be more efficient if mobile networks would inter-operate.

"Being inter-operable will force the telecoms companies to compete better on services, cost and convenience and give consumer better choice," Mwangi said

"We are moving slowly to an open system," he said. Safaricom has in the past opposed the idea citing the heavy investment in its platform. It also maintains there is no sufficient demand from customers to inter-operate.