M-Pesa reaches 50m monthly active customers

24th September 2021

By: Natasha Odendaal

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

     

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Fintech platform M-Pesa has surpassed the milestone of 50-million monthly active customers.

The number of active customers on M-Pesa, which was launched in Kenya in 2007, has doubled over the past five years, after reaching 25-million customers in 2016.

It now services customers across Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt.

Early last year, Safaricom and Vodacom launched the M-Pesa Africa joint venture to accelerate the growth of the service and deliver digital platforms as part of their focus to be the largest fintech and digital ecosystem across the continent.

M-Pesa’s transaction volumes increased 44% year-on-year in the first quarter of the current financial year, growing to 4.5-billion, with a total transaction value of €63-billion.

“As Africa’s biggest mobile money platform, M-Pesa has been one of the continent’s most astonishing financial services success stories, helping millions of people improve their lives and start businesses through financial inclusion,” Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub says.

However, Joosub points out that the group is still in the early stages of M-Pesa’s evolution and is committed to investing significantly into expanding the M-Pesa ecosystem, particularly through its new super app platform, to democratise financial services.

Since launching as a service to enable customers to instantly send money to one another, which, for many, became their first and often only access to financial services, M-Pesa has contributed to the growth of formal financial inclusion across the continent.

In Kenya, access to financial services and products increased by about 56% between 2006 and 2019, driven by the availability of mobile money, with M-Pesa also credited with lifting about 2% of Kenyan households out of extreme poverty, says Joosub.

“Today, M-Pesa is a two-sided network that provides a wide variety of financial services to both businesses and individual customers. Customers can send and receive money, make and receive business payments, pay bills, make and receive international money transfers, save and access credit, all from the convenience of their mobile phones and wherever they may be in the countries served, using more than 500 000 M-Pesa agents.”

In June this year, the M-Pesa Super App was launched across all its markets, introducing mini mobile applications enabling customers and businesses to undertake day-to-day tasks, such as shopping or accessing government services, without having to download different apps for each task and providing a modern, intuitive and secure way for customers to transact on their smartphones.

M-Pesa’s second facet focuses on businesses by expanding its ecosystem to deliver innovative solutions across microbusinesses, small and medium-sized enterprises and large businesses, Joosub adds.

“These include an open API in use by more than 45 000 developers and 200 000 businesses, the M-Pesa for Business Super App, the Transacting Till that enables businesses to go beyond receiving payments to making business payments and Pochi La Biashara that enables small businesses to separate their personal and business funds.”

Collectively, more than 500 000 businesses transact more than $7-billion every month on M-Pesa.

“Fourteen years ago, we launched M-Pesa to connect our customers to each other and to different opportunities. We are delighted to celebrate this remarkable milestone with our more than 50-million customers across the continent. As an honour to this achievement, we are reiterating our commitment and deepening our focus on more innovations that will further transform the lives of our customers,” says M-Pesa Africa MD Sitoyo Lopokoiyit.

The service has been investing in new technologies and partnerships as it seeks to deepen financial health among its customers through products that encourage savings and lending, wealth management and insurance.

M-Pesa has equally expanded its partnerships in order to boost remittances which empower customers to send and receive money across more than 200 countries and territories.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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