Safaricom Ethiopia’s mobile money platform M-Pesa and Awash Bank announced on Monday they have signed a strategic partnership to roll out digital financial products, starting with an overdraft service that allows customers to complete M-Pesa transactions even when their wallet balance is low.
The service, called “Errif be M-Pesa”, gives users digital credit directly through their mobile phones, enabling them to make airtime purchase, bill payments and merchant transactions even when they don’t have enough stored value in theie M-Pesa wallets.
M-Pesa Ethiopia CEO Elsa Muzzolini said that Errif be M-Pesa “not only expands access to credit, empowering our customers to complete transactions even when their balance is low, but also establishes our foundation for data-driven lending, helping us better understand customer loan behavior.”
Awash Bank CEO Tsehay Shiferaw described the service as a key milestone in advancing financial inclusion in Ethiopia.
“I believe this partnership is more than a collaboration between Awash Bank and M-PESA – it is a promise for our shared commitment to deliver accessible, affordable, and secure saving and credit services to our customers coming from all walks of life’’, he said.
The service is available to customers who have been actively using M-PESA for at least 90 days.
