Equity Bank has partnered with Safaricom to launch a new mobile money transfer service that will see M-PESA customers access money from the Bank's automated teller machines throughout the country.

The M-PESA to ATM service targets Safaricom's eight million M-PESA's customers.

Users of the service only require to be registered as M-PESA customers to enable them withdraw amounts ranging between KShs 200 and Kshs 35,000 from any Equity Bank ATM. 

The M-PESA to ATM service that will be available to both customers and non-customers of the Bank will adopt the normal M-PESA ATM withdrawal charges.

Customers wishing to withdraw money will initiate a withdrawal from their M-PESA menu on their mobile phones and receive an Authorisation Code.

They will input this Code into the ATM followed by their Safaricom phone number and the amount they wish to withdraw.

The Equity ATM will then dispense the required cash and a receipt.

Equity Bank's Chief Executive Officer Dr James Mwangi said the new service would not only lay a strong base for low cost Banking, but would also enable many unbanked Kenyans access money using  mobile phone technology.

"The beauty of this new service is that one does not have to have an account with Equity Bank to withdraw money from the Bank's ATMs. The service is also part of the Bank's commitment to reach more Kenyans through mobile Banking, allowing them to access financial services with ease," Dr Mwangi said.

Safaricom Chief Executive Officer Michael Joseph said: "With this partnership, M-PESA customers can now enjoy faster processing of withdrawals at Equity's 550 Auto Branches spread all over Kenya. This is an obvious improvement on a similar partnership we currently have with Pesa-Point,"

Mr. Joseph said the  Equity Bank partnership would increase the number of access points where M-PESA customers can withdraw money, citing that it presented   a novel way of dealing with the float challenges experienced by customers when withdrawing money from M-PESA agents, given the countrywide and 24 hours availability of the Equity's ATMs.

The new service, he said, would also reduce the ‘float challenges" that M-Pesa customers experience when withdrawing money.

The inter-linking of the M-PESA system, the world's first mobile Banking product with conventional Banking infrastructure like Equity's presents a ground-breaking innovation that is a fitting platform for the development of new services in line with M-PESA's Bigger-Than-Cash positioning.

The partnership will also see the two firms use the mobile platform to offer M-PESA to paybill for Equity bank loan repayments and M-PESA Super Agency service