NSSF goes cashless with M-PESA integration to encourage contributions from Kenya’s informal sector

The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) has partnered with Safaricom to fully adopt cashless payments at all its branch network across the country in a bid to increase convenience and efficiency of its services.

The move is also aimed at encouraging contributions from the booming informal sector which employees more than half of Kenyan households.

“The platform we are launching today, will make contributing to NSSF easy and effortless, We are aware that we have an enormous task ahead in meeting public expectations in our new role as a pension fund and I wish to assure you that the Fund is striving to enhance the member experience and we have a couple of initiatives that we shall roll out in the next couple of months,” said Chairman Board of Trustees, NSSF Gen. (Rtd) Dr. Julius Karangi

Under the new system, NSSF members can now remit their contributions and other payments to the organisation through the M-PESA PayBill 333300. Contributors can now easily key in their NSSF Account number under the “Account Number” option and complete their transaction without visiting the NSSF offices.

Through this partnership, employers with 20 and fewer employees can now also make their staff contributions through M-PESA. To contribute, the employer uploads their payroll data to the NSSF portal, after which they generate the Unique Payment Number (UPN) as part of their payment order. The employer then keys in the UPN as the Account Number under M-PESA.

NSSF has also enabled its members to use a self-service portal through www.nssf.or.ke or the NSSF Mobile App available on Google Play Store which they can track their contributions and also through which new members can register. In addition to launching the cashless platform NSSF is also enhancing the ease of doing business whereby returns will only be filed online from today henceforth.

Mobile payments have emerged as the most popular mode of cashless payments with data from the Central Bank showing almost nine of every ten cashless payments in the country were on the mobile phone as of December 2018. 

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