In a move to ease life for East Africans that live in the Diaspora, Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) has launched a new internet enabled service named Online Banking.

This service that was unveiled earlier this week will enable East Africans living in North America, Europe, Asia and South Africa to deposit money and make any sorts of payments using their KCB local accounts. This according to KCB officials will be aided by agents that will be operating from the Diaspora.

Speaking at the launch of this service in Kampala, Jean Mugisha, the KCB Uganda marketing manager said that this service has been put in place to cater for the over 15 million East Africans that live in the Diaspora.

“There is a big East African population in the Diaspora of about 15 million that is continuously challenged with sending money back home. All the money transfer services available have been involving a third part; sender, receiver and agent. As a result, people’s hardly earned incomes have been often misused by some receivers,” Jean Mugisha said.

She added:

“It is because of this that we have invested in an ICT system that supports international banking. This will enable a client to control all their transactions. You can deposit, make any payments and follow ups. With this, the client will be dealing with the bank directly.”

Statistics presented by KCB officials but could not be independently verified by this business portal indicate that Diaspora remittances to the East African region grew massively in 2011 with Kenya receiving over USD 800 million closely followed by Uganda with USD 649 million.