Mobile money platform M-Pesa has overtaken voice to become the biggest revenue earner for Safaricom, underlining the growth of the financial service that was launched on March 6, 2007.
The platform’s revenue declined 2.1 percent to Sh82.64 billion in the year ended March, surpassing sales from voice which recorded a larger drop of 4.6 percent to Sh82.55 billion.
The telco’s net profit fell 6.8 percent to Sh68.6 billion in the review period, after the coronavirus crisis hit revenue from financial services and calls in the year to the end of March.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm declared a final dividend of Sh0.92 per share, bringing its total payout for the period to Sh1.37 per share.
The payout marks a slight drop from the distribution of Sh1.4 per share the year before.
M-Pesa’s rise to the top came despite the telco zero-rating fees on transactions of Sh1,000 and below from March 16 to December 31 last year.
When charges were reinstated on January 1, Safaricom and the Central Bank of Kenya agreed on a review of the tariffs that saw fees for low-value transactions fall by up to 45 percent.
Voice revenue was meanwhile hurt by a drop in subscriber numbers besides discounts offered through the telco’s promotion dubbed “Tunukiwa”.
Chief executive Peter Ndegwa said the mobile money platform’s dominance will increase in the coming years, reflecting its growth opportunities and the maturity of the voice business.
“M-Pesa will keep growing just because there are more growth opportunities. Voice is a mature business and we expect it to decline slowly in the years ahead,” Mr Ndegwa said.
The financial service now accounts for 31.3 percent of total revenue of Sh264 billion, ahead of voice’s contribution at 31.2 percent in the review period.M-Pesa has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 36.05 percent since the year ended March 2009 when it raked in sales of just Sh1.5 billion, representing 2.1 percent of total revenue.The growth of voice had meanwhile decelerated, amounting to a compound annual growth rate from 2009 when its sales stood at Sh58.79 billion and accounted for 83.4 percent of total turnover.Safaricom’s results for the year ended March shows that M-Pesa now also beats voice by customer numbers, indicating that the multiple uses of the platform is helping it to grow its subscriber base at a faster rate.One-month M-Pesa active customers rose 13.6 percent to 28.3 million while one-month active voice subscribers increased 6.9 percent to 27.5 million.In […]
