Kenyan Financial Technology startup Kibo Capital Group Limited has seen a sharp rise in the firms signing up for the environment-friendly digital payments.
Kibo’s Director of innovation Evans Okech told Metropol TV that the company has added more firms into its fold since march 2020 when the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) directed firms offering mobile money services to waive fees for transactions below Sh1000.
“I think (march 2020) is the start of this shift with more companies realizing that they can save a lot of money by embracing digital receipts while also saving the environment. We have over 2000 bodabodas, over 180 SMEs and 10 big companies that have partnered with us”, Mr Okech says.
The use of physical paper receipts is going down globally.
Kibo observed that smaller firms were easier to sign up to the e-Receipting service that bigger ones due to quick decision making processes.
Shift to paperless systems
Over the past 6 years, banks in Kenya have moved from physical statements sent each month to client’s post office boxes to digital statement sent via email addresses.
This has saved cost and time. Though most banks don’t publish the cost incurred from stationery and printing, in 2016, Cooperative Bank said it spent Sh660 million in printing and stationery in 2015, down from Sh1.2 billion a year earlier following a shift to paperless banking.
Some of the firms that use Kibo’s e-Receipting solutions include real estate firm Username Investments, Insurance provider MyCredit, Airtime dispenser Tsenda Corporation, Alcohol distributor VeeW, and Fahari Capital among others. Others are on proof of concept to be signed up in the coming months.
“The e-Receipt works in totally eliminates the need for physical paper receipts and the need to handle physical cash. We sign the firms up and give them a digital teller, whereby if a client purchases a good or service, they immediately get a text with a link. When the link is clicked, it reveals a receipt which shoes the good or service purchased”, Mr Okech explains.
Banks and other big business can benefit from this innovation very much as the transactions done are securely stored on a cloud and as compared to paper receipts, the e-Receipt cannot be lost or face. It is easily retrievable by the concerned party in case of a dispute.
“It is not just a receipt, it is more than a receipt as there are some other functionalities such an advertisement capacity, feedback capabilities and security”, he concludes.
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