Equity Bank and Airtel have announced a partnership that will see the two firms partnering on mobile banking and mobile money transfer services. The partnership was announced Tuesday morning at the Equity Centre in an an event attended by Equity Group CEO, James Mwangi and Airtel Anglophone Africa CEO, Jayant Khosla. All 8.4 million Equity Bank account holders in Kenya can now transact via Airtel Money while Equity Bank outlets and agents can now act as Airtel Money agents.

Mwangi says the partnership provides clients of both firms with the safety and benefit of bank accounts, such as deposit protection, with the convenience of mobile money. It is expected that bank users will go for from transacting an average of two monthly transactions to about 60 in a month.

Equity also revealed that it had invested in a robust mobile switching system from Russia and IBM servers and storage in anticipation of expected transaction volumes. A related system upgrade at the end of June ran into difficulties, leading to intermittent availability of branchless banking and ATM services over a one week period.

Services available to users of both firms now include utility bills, bank transaction alerts, account balance notifications and mini statements.

Airtel Money will now have 15,000 agents up from 10,000 as a result of Equity Bank's bank and agent network.

Mwangi hinted that the partnership between Airtel and Equity extended to more countries beyond Kenya. Equity and Airtel are present in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. He also hinted that in the future, Airtel Money subscribers may be in a position to receive money through MoneyGram,Western Union, PayPal and Visa Personal Payments.

Other mobile solutions offered by Equity Banks such as Eazzy 247 and M-Kesho are to remain separate. M-Kesho remains a troubled partnership between Equity Bank and Safaricom's M-Pesa, with little attention from the two. Mwangi has been critical of Safaricom's control of the SIM card and M-Pesa's lack of regulation, which has seen the bank become aggressive in provision of alternate payment and money transfer solutions.

The bank has an innovation centre with a focus on mobile and payments headed by John Staley. Other mobile and payment solutions launched by the bank in the year include Visa Personal Payments, MasterCard PayPass and BebaPay.

Dennis Mbuvi

Dennis Mbuvi has been writing at CIO East Africa Magazine and CIO.co.ke since May 2010. His key focus is the use of technology to solve day to day business challenges and product reviews. Mbuvi has been invited to speak at various IT, Telecom and Media events in the region. He was also a keynote speaker at the inaugural Joomla day in Kenya talking on possibilities of the Joomla Content Management System. Mbuvi holds a B.Sc in Computer Science degree from Kenyatta University. He is on Twitter as @denniskioko