The Nairobi High Court has dismissed a plea for an extension of orders temporarily prohibiting the reintroduction of charges for bank and mobile money wallet transactions.
The reintroduction was scheduled to begin in January 2023.
The transaction charges were waived in March 2020 as part of Covid-19 emergency measures to help ease the cost of living.
On January 12,2023, the same Court ordered Safaricom and the Central Bank of Kenya to halt the return of bank-to-MPesa charges until the determination of a financial consumer rights lawsuit.
The interim decision was made by High Court judge Mugure Thande in response to a case brought by Mr Moses Wafula, a Nairobi resident who believes that the charges should not be passed on to consumers.
The judgment essentially halted the reinstatement of costs between mobile money wallets and bank transactions, as proposed by the CBK in a news release on December 6, 2022.
Mr Wafula asked the court to halt the charges, claiming that if the court rules that the Mpesa Paybill charges are illegal, additional cash from members of the public will be lost, making it impossible to persuade banks to restore the money.
He claims that the big telecommunications business and the Kenyan government have violated, infringed, and continue to endanger his and other members of the public’s rights in light of the CBK mandate.
