The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) revealed the ICT statistics for the second quarter of the 2016/2017 Financial Year. You can find the analysis for mobile subscriptions here.
For the quarter under analysis, the recorded number of mobile money subscriptions was 31.9 million served by 161,583 active mobile money agents as of 31st December 2016. In the same quarter, 456.6 deposits and withdrawals were done, which amounted to a transfer of KES 1.1 trillion. It should be noted that this volume included person-to-person transfers and mobile commerce (paying for goods and services using till and pay-bill numbers, among other options), where KES 515.9 billion and KES 586.4 billion worth of transactions were made for the respective categories.
As shown in the table above, Safaricom’s M-Pesa, which had 21,574,006 subscriptions as of 31st December, was at the top for all mobile money transfer services. Airtel Money was the second popular option in this category with 6,711,829 subscriptions and 18,354 agents, a lower number when compared to M-Pesa that has 124,084 agents.
It should be remembered that Equity Money, Mobikash, and Tangaza have gained grounds in this field. For instance, Equity Money and Mobikash recorded admirable subscriptions at 1,240,503 and 1,772,696 (provisional). On the other hand, Tangaza recorded 503,556 subscriptions (provisional) while Orange Money was least popular with 194,322 subscriptions.
Person-to-person transfers dwarfed mobile commerce transactions across all service providers, meaning that cash payments still take precedence over mobile payment.
For Mobile Number Portability (MNP), in-ports dropped from 404 in the previous quarter to 153, which was a 62.1% loss. The MNP when a customer keeps his/her phone number upon changing an operator.
