President William Ruto has clarified the soon to be launched Hustler Fund, which seeks to foster financial inclusion, will be disbursed to the interested Kenyans via an online platform.

Dr Ruto said there will be no committees to control the distribution of the funds for there to be a seamless process with the initial phase of the fund set to be unveiled on November 10.

Speaking at the Kenya Kwanza Parliamentary Group meeting at State House, Nairobi on Wednesday, the Head of State assured Kenyans that the disbursement will not be biased.

“The product is going to be seamless. You will not need any committee, you do not need to know anybody, and the product will be online - just like M-Pesa,” Dr Ruto said.

He went on, “I know some of you had made arrangements to form a committee for disbursing Hustler Funds. Sorry, I will disappoint you. There will be no Hustler Fund committee."

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He said he had initiated talks with mobile service and technology providers to register the programme online to ensure the disbursement process is smooth.

He said: “We are working with our MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) and technology providers and all the mobile operators including Safaricom, Airtel, TelKom and others and that is the platform this money is going to be disbursed through," said Ruto.

He revealed that Hustler Funds will initially be disbursed to individual borrowers followed by Saccos, then SMEs before it is ultimately disbursed to the much bigger borrowers.

"Have no doubt that nobody will be left behind. We have also made it possible to borrow using an ordinary phone where we have a USSD code where people can easily access it," he added.

The Ruto administration is targeting up to 10 million borrowers, and the Head of State has assured that the Sh50 billion had already been set aside for the fund as had been promised.

Cabinet had earlier this week indicated that the fund’s initial phase would set the minimum loan limit at Sh500 and the upper limit at Sh50,000 based on each borrower’s credit score.

Ruto’s cabinet confirmed that the loan will attract an 8 per cent interest rate per annum.