Safaricom’s mobile payment platform used to pay for goods and services is now earning the telco Sh40 million monthly, highlighting the impact of increased preference for cashless transactions.
The telco discloses that Lipa na M-Pesa, a platform that enables merchants to collect payments from customers using a till number, has seen increased popularity especially in Covid-19 environment.
This is the first time the telco is disclosing the revenue, an equivalent of Sh1.33 million daily, with previous disclosures only being about the tills and the number of transactions.
Safaricom says it closed March with about 302,000 till numbers — used as pay points for customers — from which it earns the money.
“Our one month active Lipa na M-Pesa tills grew by almost 75 percent year-on-year to around 302,000. This now contributes more than Sh40 million per month in revenue,” says the telco in the latest annual report.
Lipa na M-Pesa accouted for Sh970.2 million or 14.8 percent of the Sh6.53 trillion mobile payments that passed through Safaricom’s M-Pesa in the financial year ended March.
Customer- to-Business(C2B) payment recorded the highest amount at Sh3.2trillion, followed by Business- to-Customer(B2C) at Sh2.2 trillion.
Lipa na M-Pesa comes with paybill and buy goods options, both of which earn Safaricom a commission. Safariciom charges between Sh23 and Sh210 for pay bill transactions of up to 150,000. The entity operating the till has the option to pay all or part of the cost or pass the entire sum to the customer.
The telco also runs by goods option, mostly popular for retail purchase of goods and services since customers are not charged to transact.
However, but the owner of the till pays Safaricom a fee of 0.5 percent of the value of every transaction.
Safaricom launched Lipa na M-Pesa service in 2013 and has been innovating the product to increase its usage.The telco in June launched the Lipa na M-Pesa business app, allowing business owners to access real-time statements, export statements and track their business performance.The app also allows businesses to withdraw money from their Lipa na M-Pesa tills to their M-Pesa accounts or bank accounts.