Safaricom has announced that it will reduce the daily maintenance fees of its M-PESA overdraft service, Fuliza by up to 40% from the beginning of the month.
Fuliza enables M-PESA customers to complete their M-PESA transactions when they have insufficient funds in their M-PESA account. The service is available as many times as possible provided that one is within the Fuliza limit provided by the service provider.
The discounted tariff will take effect from October 1, 2022. All Fuliza customers who have a positive limit and with no outstanding balance will benefit from the new tariff. Additionally, customers that receive loans of Ksh. 1,000 and below shall enjoy a waiver on daily maintenance fees for the first 3 days.
Fuliza loans of Ksh. 500 and below will attract a daily fee of Ksh. 3, down from Ksh. 5. Whereas Fuliza loans of between Ksh. 501 Ksh. 1,000 will now be charged a daily fee of Ksh. 6, down from a previous fee of Ksh. 10. Both these loan groups have received a 40% discount in daily charges.
However, Larger amounts will still attract higher charges. Fuliza loans between Ksh. 1,501 to Ksh. 2,500 will be charged a daily rate Ksh. 20, down from Ksh. 25. This is only a 10% change.
Loans disbursed by Fuliza were at Ksh. 288 billion in the first half of the year. This is up from Ksh. 220.38 billion in the same period last year and Ksh. 176 billion in 2020. The loan service made history when it acquired over 1 million customers and gave out over Ksh. 1 Billion in loans in just 8 days.
New Fuliza charges effective October 1 2022
| Component | Tariff Band | Old Tariff | New Tariff | % Change |
| Access Fee | All drawdowns | 1% | 1% | No change. |
| Daily MaintenanceFee (DMF) | 1 – 100 | 0.00 | 0.00 | |
| 101 – 500 | 5.00 | 3.00 | 40% discount | |
| 501 – 1,000 | 10.00 | 6.00 | 40% discount | |
| 1,001 – 1500 | 20.00 | 18.00 | 10% discount | |
| 1,501 – 2,500 | 25.00 | 20.00 | 20% discount | |
| 2,501 – 70,000 | 30.00 | 25.00 | 16.7% discount |
