The Barclays Bank of Kenya has partnered University of Nairobi to launch Host-To-Host an automated seamless cash management system for over 60,000 students to eliminate the manual and labour-intensive payment processes.

Host-To-Host an initiative embedded in the Barclays Integrator is part of the University's digitization programme that ensures end to end integration between UON's treasury system and the bank system, resulting in a decrease of errors and rejects that result from manual collections and payments processes. The system also accommodates mobile payments available from Barclays.

The move will enhance transparency, security and high standards of accountability through readily available information that is also credible for audit purposes. The new solution will counter fraud by eliminating the physical slips from the payment process, comes at a time when the continent is grappling with how to optimize internal processes and ensure systems and hardware infrastructure are robust enough to mitigate the risk associated with fraud.

"This development creates a win-win situation for both institutions; while the students will have access to first-class service from their finance office, as a bank we are able to showcase the impact of technology and banking convergence to the business," said BBK Managing Director, Jeremy Awori.