City Hall to collect own revenue after JamboPay contract ends

City Hall has announced that it will go it alone in revenue collection starting Monday following the expiry of its contract with JamboPay.

The county government said it has officially parted ways with JamboPay, a tech firm that has been collecting revenue on behalf of the county since 2014.

Nairobi County Finance and Economic Planning executive Charles Kerich said that they have been testing their system and it is now ready for use, adding that they will now use a new USSD short code *235# from Monday and a pay bill number which will be announced later.

SEAMLESS TRANSITION

JamboPay’s formal contract with City Hall ended on April 7, 2019 but had been extended twice to aid in seamless transition as the county accelerated efforts to finalise the migration process and continuity of service from the private provider to an internally managed system which is to be run by the county government.

“Although the initial negotiations allowed for up to a 90-day extension period, and given our readiness to implement our internally managed revenue collection system, we made a decision not to extend this contract further.

“We have been testing our system and it is now ready for use as we have successfully migrated all the data we had to and we should start using our own system from Monday,” added Mr Kerich.

EJIJIPAY

He said the county government will still continue using the EJijiPay platform, which is owned by City Hall but was being powered by JamboPay for the duration of their contract with the county government.

Mr Kerich said that the delay in the migration has been caused in part by JamboPay who are yet to handover certain key components of the system including the USSD short code and pay bill account.

“There is going to be an exit process as well as an official and final handover of all data, assets and reports. We expect, for instance, that all money that has been deposited by Nairobi residents in JamboPay’s wallet will be reimbursed to the owners,” he said.

NO MORE ENGAGEMENT

On Friday, JamboPay Chief Finance Officer Dominic Kosgei said the firm has decided not to engage the county further after the expiry of the latest contract extension on June 7, saying that they have given them enough time to find an alternative revenue collection system.

“We cannot stay in migration mode forever and so we are disabling our services starting Friday when our contract expires. We have given them enough time to migrate their system and we are now tired of the circus,” said Mr Kosgei.

He said that they have been in communication with the county several times since the latest extension on May 7, but it seems the county has not been keen to fully engage them.

“We cannot stay on migration mode forever as it costs us a lot of resources having a team just dedicated for that. It seems like we are the ones pushing more for the engagement but now we will not allow any more piecemeal extensions,” he said.