A Safaricom customer uses M-Pesa. FILE PHOTO | NMG Mobile money platform M-Pesa is now processing transactions of Sh1.6 trillion per month in Kenya and other African countries, making it the largest payment platform on the continent.
The broader performance of M-Pesa has been disclosed by South Africa’s Vodacom Group which owns the financial service on a 50/50 basis with Safaricom .
Vodacom also owns a 35 percent stake in Safaricom. The two firms teamed up in April to acquire the M-Pesa brand from their London-based parent firm Vodafone Group Plc through their investment vehicle M-Pesa Global Services Limited.
“Since launching in 2007, M-Pesa has grown to have the largest reach of any financial services provider in Africa, with 39.6 million active customers, including Safaricom, up 9.7 percent year-on-year,” Vodacom says in its latest annual report for the year ended March.
“Customers in our international markets, including Safaricom, now process more than $14.7 billion (Sh1.6 trillion) a month in transactions through the platform, making it Africa’s biggest payment platform.”
Safaricom’s participation in the global payments market comes at a time when tech giants, including Facebook, are joining the space.
Facebook recently introduced an in-chat payment feature on its WhatsApp platform, starting with Brazil.
The performance report captures M-Pesa statistics for Kenya, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Lesotho.
M-Pesa was discontinued in South Africa, Vodacom’s biggest market, in June 2016 after the service failed to gain a critical mass of users.
M-Pesa’s growing market share in the rest of the continent indicates the opportunity for Safaricom and Vodacom to grow their revenue and earnings, with the companies seeking to expand the service to more African markets.
They also plan to deepen its use beyond its traditional solutions such as person-to-person payments to new offerings, including investments and mobile commerce. "M-Pesa revenue from Vodacom international markets grew 29.8 percent to R4 billion (Sh24.7 billion), representing 18.3 percent of total service revenue," Vodacom said."This performance was underpinned by robust revenue growth in Mozambique (59.4 percent), strong growth in the DRC (48.3 percent) and Lesotho (27 percent), and a solid performance in Tanzania (7.4 percent), despite intensifying competitive pressure and a more challenging regulatory environment." Charges M-Pesa revenues from Kenya, the biggest market, rose 12.6 percent to Sh84.4 billion over the same period. Active M-Pesa subscribers in Kenya stand at 25 million. "M-Pesa now contributes 33.6 percent of service revenue while mobile data is now contributing 16.2 percent, thereby reducing the […]
