Fuliza is an overdraft service that Mpesa users can get from the phone company Safaricom. Every Mpesa line that is registered can use the Fuliza feature.
Fuliza is a word in the Swahili language that means
- Keeping up with something,
- doing something without stopping or
- Don’t stop doing something.
The idea behind Fuliza is to let people who use Mpesa keep doing what they were doing without stopping.
Fuliza isn’t a loan and wasn’t meant to be one. Instead, it’s meant to help Mpesa clients get by until they can get a loan.
Safaricom and the Kenyan banks KCB and NCBA work together to offer Fuliza.
Contents
How Do You Use Fuliza?
You can’t just go to Fuliza and take the money out. But if you need cash, you can send the money to a different M-pesa number and then take the money.
- You can send money from Fuliza to your bank account, then use an ATM to get the money.
- You can use paybill numbers to buy money through Fuliza for both Safaricom and Airtel, but you will have to pay paybill fees.
There are paybill numbers and till numbers that can be used to pay for machedise. Here, charges will be made for paybill and till number.
How do I sign up for Fuliza?
Safaricom Fuliza All Mpesa-registered lines can use Mpesa, as long as the line has passed Safaricom’s test of creditworthiness. Fuliza’s creditworthiness is based on a number of things, such as how long the line has been listed, the average daily amount of Mpesa transactions, and whether or not there have been any defaults in the past.
Fuliza lets you do M-PESA transfers even if you don’t have enough money in your M-PESA account. You can withdraw money more than once as long as you don’t go over your Fuliza cap.
To sign up for Fuliza’s overdraft service, you need to dial *234# from your Mpesa-registered phone. From there, you can get into the building by following the directions.
How do you see how much Fuliza you can have?
Once you have signed up for Fuliza, you can use the Fuliza code *234#, choose option 0, then choose option 1 (check limit) to find out how much you can borrow. You will get an SMS telling you how much you can send with Fuliza Mpesa on that line.
The more Mpesa deals you make and the faster you pay back the facility, the higher your Fuliza Mpesa limit will get.
How do you pay back The Fuliza Facility?
Once you’ve checked your credit limit, you can use Fuliza to pay bills and send money to other Mpesa users and Mpesa numbers that haven’t been registered.
But it’s important to know that you can’t remove Fuliza with Mpesa. You can only use it to pay for something or send it to someone who will give you cash.
Mpesa agents have come up with a way to help their customers get mobile loans, and a number has been put in a way that makes it easy for people to send money and get it back.
Fuliza is directly taken out of any money added to a Mpesa account. For example, if you owed Kshs 500 in Fuliza and received or transferred Kshs 1,000 to your Mpesa account, the Kshs 500 in Fuliza and any fees will be taken out of the Kshs 1,000 you have received or deposited.
With this method, the number of people who don’t pay back their loans has gone down because the money is instantly taken back from Mpesa deposits. Fuliza gets back more than 98.5% of all the money it lends out.
To make sure the overdraft option was paid back on time, Safaricom started, on September 14, 2021, to pay back the Fuliza loan with money from M-shwari and KCB M-pesa accounts.
In the letter from Safaricom and the banks, it says that the banks reserve the right to use your money in the wallets to pay off Fuliza’s debt without telling you first.
Conclusion
Fuliza’s new credit facility will help thousands of Kenyans who are having trouble making ends meet because of the bad economy. According to Safaricom’s published financial statements for the year 2021,
“Fuliza has remained the most popular loan product during FY21, with revenue growing by 61.3% YoY to KShs 4.5 billion and the number of daily active Fuliza customers growing by more than 100% to 1.4 million.”
In FY21, the average value of M-Shwari loans went up by 26.3% to KShs 5,575.0, which led to a 15.5% rise in income to KShs 2.2 billion.
Since they were first made, Fuliza and M-pesa have had a big effect on Kenyan society.We can only expect Fuliza to grow very quickly in the next few years.