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{
    "id": 1095769,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1095769/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 281,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Saku, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Ali Rasso",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13473,
        "legal_name": "Dido Ali Raso",
        "slug": "dido-ali-raso"
    },
    "content": "The laws of a country must be progressive to stay with or ahead of time. With this Bill, digital transaction is the new frontier. Many years ago, we only saw this with the Nairobi Stock Exchange. The International Stock Exchange and the Nairobi Stock Exchange are the only places where digital transactions were taking place. However, with the rise and multiplication of things like M-Pesa, the many transactions that the banks are undertaking on social media platform have made it necessary that a law is put in place so that lenders and borrowers can be safeguarded. If today somebody gets the Personal Identification Number (PIN) of your debit card, he can withdraw money from your account from anywhere in the world. One of the things that nobody should ever ask you to reveal to him/her is your PIN. With the emergence of digital transaction platforms, commercial banks are slowly becoming irrelevant. We all do our transactions on digital platforms while in this House. We mostly use M-Pesa. You hardly go to the bank. You only go to the bank when you want to interact with your bank to do something bigger than what this platform has already offered. There are many advantages that this facility has provided, particularly in terms of time, efficiency and reaching the customer or those who sometimes we, as Members of this august House, call dependents. However, there is also the flip side of it. How safe is this particular system? It is so easy for someone to withdraw your money through a system in which only a few people understand how it works. If we followed what happened a year ago, a group of young computer geniuses sat somewhere in a rural set up and withdrew money from M-Pesa agents thus making a lot of money. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, other advantages of this is that it employs many young people, young graduates and diploma-holders who can be efficiently employed by SMEs and MMEs. Once the platform is set, it is only that young person who has the means to go around this that can make money for the company that has employed him or her. Therefore, this law has come at the right time, so that we do not go blindly into the future. This is the future. It is with us. One of the problems before this law came to be is that when you lost money through those platforms, you did not know where to start a complaint. The investigators did not know where to start. Sometimes individuals were taken to court, but there was no substantive matter for them to stand trial on. I consider this a major area of financial transactions in our country. If the financial system in Kenya fails, all of us will point a finger at the Central Bank of Kenya, which is the regulator. However, with this law coming into place, it is important for all of us to support it. In future, there could be other things which will come up like the digital money called bitcoin. Initially, people were making a lot of money from bitcoins. All of a sudden, it is as if it has gone down. Many have lost their money. Many have stopped trading in it because there is not as much money as there was in the beginning when it was new. Those are the new terrains to be navigated by those in the financial sector. However, there must be laws to regulate them. Without laws, there will be anarchy because most transactions will be on digital platforms. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, with those few remarks, I beg to support the Bill."
}