Addressing journalists in Dar es Salaam yesterday during the announcement of the partnership, CRDB’s Director of Retail Banking, Boma Raballa and T-Pesa’s Managing Director, Lulu Mkude said the move is aimed at simplifying transactions of TTCL’s T-Pesa and CRDB’s SimBanking customers.
“The objective of our partnership is to ease our customers’ way of transacting between their CRDB accounts and T-Pesa platform using their mobile phones,” Raballa said while noting that apart from moving money from their CRDB accounts to T-Pesa platform, the customers can also buy airtime and pay for other services using the same system.
“This agreement gives our customers a one stop shop platform through SimBanking to do all of their transactions including those of T-Pesa,” he added noting that smartphone holders will have to download the bank’s SimBanking application.
He said the CRDB and TTCL’s deal will also enable rural based consumers who have T-Pesa accessing mobile phones, access formal banking services because official data shows that 60 percent of adult Tanzanians have access to formal banking services through their mobile phones while only 17 percent have a bank account.
“CRDB is working hard towards ensuring that more Tanzanians get access to formal financial services as an important aspect towards rapid economic growth,” the CRDB Director of Retail Banking added.
In her remarks, T-Pesa’s Mkude said the deal is a big achievement for the state owned TTCL because it will enable millions of Tanzanians both rural and urban based to access forma banking services in line with the government’s financial inclusion agenda.
“In order to access this service, T-Pesa subscribers will have to access their SimBanking account on their mobile phones,” Mkude said noting that the deal will also mean that payment ca also be made to third parties.
