Kenya based fintech firm Jambo Pay has agreed to extend its revenue collection contract with Nairobi County by 30 more days after its expiry on April 7th.
Acting County Secretary Pauline Kahiga said this extension will enable City Hall to migrate to its internal revenue collection system. “We have agreed to extend the deal for 30 days to allow us smoothly migrate to our own internal system which we believe will be ready in a month’s time” Ms Kahiga said on Sunday.
JamboPay was contracted in 2014 to automate collection of monies for City Hall in order to reduce revenue loss through cash payments and pilferage. The platform has since managed to automate collection of funds from 85 of the county’s revenue streams including parking, land rates, Single Business Permits (SBPs), while City Hall manually handles the 51 remaining streams.
Ms. Kahiga added that Nairobi County will also acquire a payment platform software as part of the deal. It is still unclear as to which platform she was specifically referring to.
Nairobi residents have been using the ejijiPAY platform to pay for parking, land rates, Single Business Permits (SBPs) and other fees.
Related Article: Kenya’s JamboPay terminates revenue collection deal with Nairobi City
Nairobi sought a private firm in February to install an integrated city revenue management system (ICMS) to replace the manual systems that have been in use alongside the JamboPay e-payment platform.
The contract requires JamboPay to settle all City Hall’s transactions within 12 hours for cash transactions and three days for all electronic payments in daily batches.
Despite automation of revenue collection, the City Hall has still been struggling to meet its revenue targets since the 2013-14 period. KES 8.8 billion was collected in the previous financial year (June 2017-2018), a 10% fall from KES9.8 billion generated in a similar period to June 2017.
The firm had cited the contract would be terminated due to excessive political meddling during Governor Sonko’s tenure, as well as non-payment of fees owed to the company.
