Tomorrow morning, Equity Bank Limited (EQTY) and American Express will launch the first American Express branded cards in Kenya. The venue of the launch will be at Equity centre, 9th floor, Upper Hill, Nairobi. The bank will be the sole issuer of American Express (AmEx) branded cards in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. It will also handle customer relations for AmEx and manage card users billing and credit.

American Express is a global financial services company that deals in credit card, travellers cheque and charge card businesses. Equity is the largest bank in Kenya by customer base, with over 8.5 million bank accounts.

The bank had announced the agreement of the deal in July this year. “The partnership with American Express will also afford the bank a rare opportunity to serve American Express card members visiting the East Africa region.” It had said in a press statement.

In December last year an American Express press release stated:

Equity Bank and American Express today announced a partnership agreement, through which Equity Bank will act as the exclusive issuer of American Express Card products in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.  As part of this agreement, Equity Bank will also acquire merchants on to the American Express network in these countries.

Indicating that the launch has been in the pipeline for a while.

Equity follows Barclays bank (BBK) which had signed a merchant acquisition deal with American express in 2005. However this deal did not involve allowing Barclays to issuie AmEx branded cards.

The announcement comes only 7 days after it emerged that Equity bank had started to ship its thin SIMs. The use of the thin SIM is equity,s strategy to penetrate the mobile money transfer market.  The market is currently controlled by Safaricom's Mpesa. Over 90% of funds transferred via mobile phones in Kenya are via Mpesa.  Kenyan companies are moving to increase their share of the cashless money transfer segment, more so with the expected implementation of cashless fare systems for matatus.