Ruto Welcomes Visa’s Involvement In The Hustler Fund

President William Ruto has urged Visa to collaborate with Kenya as the nation grows its network of international bilateral relationships.

The Head of State commended the Hustler Fund’s enthusiasm in cooperating with the global leader in digital payments on Wednesday.

“Kenya is aware of the significant part Visa continues to play in facilitating investment and remittances from the Diaspora. We appreciate the business’ enthusiasm in working with the Hustler Fund to speed up access “added Ruto.

This information was shared at a meeting with Alfred Kelly, the chief executive officer of Visa, in Washington, D.C. It was revealed that over 15 million clients who opted in have received loans totaling Sh7.54 billion just 12 days after the fund’s inception (as of December 12, 2022). By December 12th, 2022, the fund’s loan repayment will have reached Sh1.2 billion.

President Ruto claims that the amount of money coming into the fund demonstrates Kenyans’ confidence in both the Hustler Fund and the Kenya Kwanza government.

The fund is primarily intended to support the nation’s small-scale traders. There are four loan types offered by The Hustler Fund: personal, microbusiness, SME, and start-up loans. Kenya and the Visa firm have joined in the past.

In order to increase its presence in the continent, Visa built the first innovation lab in Africa in Kenya in June of this year.

To jointly develop payment and commerce solutions, the studio will bring together programmers, Visa’s internal and external clients, and other partners. In order to gain market share as customers migrate to new payment methods and digital wallets that could bypass card networks or restrict their revenue growth, the hub was opened in Kenya.

Visa teamed with Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telco, in 2021 to make card payments available to the company’s 150,000 M-Pesa (mobile money) retailers. After postings in Dubai, London, Miami, San Francisco, and Singapore, the Nairobi studio is the first in Africa and sixth overall.