Kampala, 6 November 2026: Pearl Bank has launched a three-month campaign that will reward customers of its Wendi mobile wallet with fuel vouchers, smartphones, household appliances and cash in weekly draws, as the government-owned lender moves to support Ugandans facing rising living costs.
The campaign, dubbed Wendi Ku Win, was launched on Friday at the Old Taxi Park in Kampala in partnership with the Uganda Taxi Operators Federation (UTOF). Customers who make transactions of UGX10,000 or more on the wallet qualify for the weekly draws.
Andrew Kabeera, an Executive Director at Pearl Bank, said the choice of the taxi park as the launch venue was deliberate, given the pressure that rising fuel prices have placed on transport operators and commuters.
“We are at the taxi park not in error; it is by choice. Fuel prices have gone high, and we thought about how we could support the people we have here,” Kabeera said.
“As a bank for the people, a government bank, we cannot sit back and not stand with the people when the economy is tightening.”
He said the campaign is meant to encourage taxi operators and the public to register on Wendi, through which they can pay for fuel without being charged, while also standing a chance to win prizes.
Prizes include fuel vouchers worth UGX30,000, UGX50,000 and UGX100,000, smartphones, household appliances such as microwaves and blenders, and cash rewards of UGX100,000.
Kabeera said the bank also wants to reach taxi operators organised in savings and credit cooperative organisations (SACCOs). According to him, Pearl Bank can support organised groups with short-term financing, such as advancing money in the morning to operators who need it to start the day and allowing them to repay in the evening.
“That is not possible if people are not organised,” he said, commending UTOF chairman Rashid Ssekindi for his efforts to bring taxi operators together.
Kabeera said the bank is also considering future financing for taxi operators who switch to electric vehicles.
“In the future, we shall be able to finance, for example, taxis which are using electric power rather than the fuel we are talking about now. Those are things we are looking to implement in the future,” he said.
The plans come at a time when UTOF leaders have publicly raised concerns about access to credit. Ssekindi said in September 2025 that taxi operators were still struggling to secure financing to buy new vehicles for their members.
Kabeera urged members of the public to register on the platform, noting that a customer’s phone number serves as their account number and that registration is free.
“Once you transact from 10,000, you are able to win,” he said.
Asked about the campaign’s duration, Kabeera said it would run for three months, adding in Luganda that the bank hoped the current economic situation would have eased within that period.
Wendi, which the bank says can be used without a bank account or a smartphone, allows users to save, send money, pay bills, make merchant and fuel payments, pay government collections and receive Western Union transfers. It can be accessed by dialling *229# on any phone or through the Wendi app on Google Play and the App Store.
According to Pearl Bank, the wallet has onboarded more than one million subscribers since its launch in November 2023 and works with more than 13,000 agents across the country. The bank says Wendi offers savers interest of 12.5 per cent a year and hosts a SACCO management system that allows groups to save and monitor their savings in real time.
The bank says the wallet has also been used to pay Parish Development Model (PDM) funds to beneficiaries and to disburse relief funds to victims of the Bududa landslides.
Source: PML Daily
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