Nairobi, Aug. 3 -- Airtel on Monday launched a product to rival Safaricom's Pochi la Biashara, triggering a price war that has cut the cost of customer transfers to micro-businesses' wallets to zero.

Airtel Money's Bizna Wallet takes aim at Safaricom's M-Pesa Pochi la Biashara, a low-cost product that provides small-scale traders with a simplified digital payment solution.

Customers paying for goods via Airtel's wallet will not be charged a fee as the telco seeks to increase the number of merchants on its platform and cut Safaricom's share.

Safaricom, in response to Airtel's launch, on Saturday lowered its tariffs for payments to business tills and paybills as well as Pochi la Biashara, where transactions of less than Sh200 are now fre...