It’s the year 2007 and the month is March. Nothing to see there, only that it signals the time when East Africa’s largest telco, Safaricom, put Kenya on the road to solving the financial inclusion puzzle.
That was the year M-Pesa came to life. Co-owned by Safaricom, the popular mobile money transfer service kickstarted Kenya’s journey to becoming the capital of financial technology innovation in Africa .
Kenya’s fintech revolution has helped the country achieve near-total financial inclusion, currently at 82.9 percent ; the highest on the continent. Buoyed by M-Pesa which commands a 98.8 percent market share as of last December, mobile payments are commonplace in Kenya, growing in leaps and bounds through the years.
But that’s not what this gist is about, there’s a shocker in the works. Mobile payments suffer spectacular slump in Kenya
It’s the year 2020 and a terrible viral outbreak is upending everything. And for the first time since M-Pesa came into existence (fun fact; it’s been 13 years), mobile payments have underwhelmed in Kenya.
To state it clearly, payments made through mobile phones and tablets have registered its lowest year-on-year Q1 growth in the 13 years since Kenya witnessed the arrival of the first mobile money platform in the country.
Official statistics from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) indicate that mobile payments in Kenya for Q1 2020 (January to March) amounted to about KES 1.087 Tn (USD 10.17 Bn). It’s an increase, alright. But not as much as what’s typical. Before now, the lowest Q1 growth rate recorded was 6.9 percent in 2017/2018. The highest-ever mobile payments growth recorded was in Q1 2009 which saw an astonishing 459 percent growth compared to Q1 2008.
On paper, it seems like a decent sum. After all, it’s a KES 22.3 Bn (USD 208.66 Mn) rise and it does represent a growth of 2.1 percent compared to the same period last year which saw KES 1.065 Tn (USD 9.96 Bn) in transactions.
But the devil is in the details. The mind-boggling bit is found in the fact that the latest year-on-year Q1 growth in mobile money deals is the lowest in Kenya since Safaricom co-launched M-Pesa. And this decline was anything but expected. And there’s more data
Mobile money transactions are the most common form of payment in Kenya. Total mobile money transfers have recorded strong growth every year since 2007, even more so in recent years at […]