Kenyan Banking Apps: Which Is The Fairest Of Them All

Smartphones and Internet services are now readily available to majority of Kenyans. Banks have taken notice and offer a number of digital banking options to ease the banking experience for their customers. We will take a look at the mobile banking apps from Barclays, KCB, Equity, CBA and Stanbic Banks and see how they compare to each other. The apps for all 5 banks are available for download from Google Play and the Apple Apps Store.

All 5 banks provide the following basic services:

  • they allow you to view your account,
  • make enquiries for account balance and mini statement,
  • transfer funds to your other accounts, to accounts in the same bank and other banks in Kenya,
  • pay bills, purchase airtime, transfer funds from your account to M-PESA, view your credit card balance.

With the Barclays Bank App you can also order your account statement and cheque-book as well as get security tips while the CBA App allows you to request for full bank statements and get forex rates.

The Stanbic Bank App stands out from the rest by allowing automated salary advance for pre-qualified salaried customers. It also provides a loan calculator to allow one to make projections on loan repayments, principal and interest trends for property and vehicle loans.

The KCB and Equity Apps are available to non-account holders for both banks. Both Apps also provide graphs to enable customers to visualize their spending and transactions and allow them to track stocks and foreign exchange rates. The KCB App allows customers to access loans and fetch contacts to send money.

With the Equity App, one can manage Equity accounts in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. The app also allows one to send money to Airtel Money and M-PESA in Kenya, Tigo Cash in  Rwanda and MTN Money in Uganda and Rwanda. One can also send money to Whatsapp, Twitter and Facebook contacts. Customers can also buy goods using Eazzypay at any outlet that displays the Eazypay sign. Personalise your Equity Bank App by uploading  a profile photo and make each account unique with its own icon and custom background.

Looking at the 5 banks and the Apps they have on offer, it is clear that all 5 provide similar basic services. If one is to pick which of the five banks provides the best app for its customers, one has to look at which unique services they each provide. With that criterion, Equity bank seems to provide the greater number of unique services to its customers through its app making it the fairest of them all.