The telecommunications giants, Safaricom and Huawei, were jointly awarded "The Business of Tomorrow" award at AfricaCom 2019 in Cape Town, South Africa for the overdraft service Fuliza.
Launched in January 2019, Fuliza is a service that allows M-PESA customers to complete their M-PESA transactions when they have insufficient funds in their M-PESA account. The service proved to be popular, with users borrowing Ksh 6.2 billion in the first month (approximately USD 61million) and 81 billion Kenya shillings over the first six months (an excess of USD 794 million).
Safaricom interim CEO Michael Joseph said, "M-Pesa continues to play a leading role in deepening financial inclusion in the country. Fuliza enriches our mobile services portfolio further fulfiling our promise to always provide our customers with relevant products and services that meet them at their point in need. We are glad to partner with Huawei to bring this commitment to life."
David Chen, the Director of Marketing and Solution Sales for Huawei Southern Africa region, said, "We have focused on building a world-class application programming interface to enable the local ICT system to tap into M-Pesa and serve the needs of our clients for business success and nurture the digital economy from a macro perspective."