People, please be careful with the NationHela card. Four times in the last year I had problems accessing the funds in my card account, and I swore not to use them again. I'm not in Kenya now so perhaps they have improved.
First time I deposited money without a problem but after purchasing some stuff off ebay, my card was double charged for the transaction. Took two months to reverse this.
Second time I made a large deposit and my money was only credited a week later after numerous calls and emails to NationHela/ DTB customer care team. This made me suspect that in that period, DTB (who handle the back office stuff for NH) was trading with my money.
Third time I made an online purchase and was double charged again; this time for a large sum. Took ages to get this corrected. NH customer care told me that the problem arose with the merchant's system but I have my doubts. I have three other Kenyan debit cards and this has never happened with them.
Fourth time, I deposited 5K in my account and received a text message showing my new balance. Confirmed same balance online at home. Two days later, I went to shop at Naivas and the transaction was rejected. Reason? Insufficient funds in my account. Checked online and indeed, all my money had been wiped out and this wasn't showing in the transaction history. Called customer care (They knew me by now) and those guys couldn't explain what was happening. Said that I might have been a victim of online fraud. But how was this possible? I'm very careful with online transactions.
Kept calling and emailing NH for a month and eventually, 4K was mysteriously credited back into my account. I called CC to ask why full sum of 5K had not been credited and the guy told me that he would 'sort' me out but I shouldn't email again. Dude gave me his personal number to call in case of any problem, again saying I should avoid using the official email and phone channels to communicate.
500bob was credited into my account ten minutes later and I again emailed the CC (official email) to complain. Two minutes later, the same CC guy called to ask why I was 'reporting' him to the company and proceeded to scold me. 40 bob was credited into my account soon after.
I emailed NH once more, complaining and the same CC guy called using a private number and reprimanded me for emailing. 200 bob was then credited into my account again but there was still 260 that was missing. I got tired of these people, withdrew all my money and destroyed my NH card. I don't plan to use them again as I felt that it was easy to get defrauded by their own staff. At that time they didn't have any offices so it was only possible to complain via phone or email. Maybe it's different now.
If you want to engage in online shopping, my advice would be to just open a bank account for that specific purpose. Keep the account balance at the minimum allowed and only deposit when you intend to spend. I&M and NIC's debit cards are excellent for this purpose.