According to the just released financials, Safaricom’s gains have been attributed to Data services and M-Pesa. Gone are the days that telcos would make a kill on SMS and Voice, technology adoption has pushed people to data consumption and we all know Kenya runs on M-Pesa.
M-Pesa
Safaricom stated that there are over 26 million M-Pesa users. Citing that mobile money has evolved from being just about money transfer to impacting people lives. The company gave an example of Kibera, where they say M-Pesa has provided access to water for over 80,000 residents.
The company also revealed that for the past ten years, over 184 billion shillings have been transacted over M-Pesa, up from 83 million shillings back in 2006. 1.2 million people check their M-Pesa statements regularly and the company is said to have dropped peer-to-peer transaction charges by 9%, referring to M-Pesa Kadogo.
M-Pesa transactions value now stands at 6.8 billion shillings a 27% growth from five years ago and, where it stood at 2.5 billion shillings.
| 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DEPOSITS | 845 million | 1.077 billion | 1.1319 billion | 1.569 billion | 1.849 billion |
| P2P TRANSACTIONS | 842 million | 979 million | 1.151 billion | 1.335 billion | 1.603 billion |
| WITHDRAWALS | 751 million | 929 million | 1.129 billion | 1.342 billion | 1.591 billion |
| OTHER* | 198 million | 336 million | 580 million | 1.048 billion | 1.826 billion |
| TOTAL | 2.536 billion | 3.321 billion | 4.181 billion | 5.294 billion | 6.869 billion |
*B2C, C2B, B2B, Lipa Na M-PESA, IMT, Gaming, M-Shwari, KCB M-PESA, Airtime.
Breaking down the transactions value shows how much Lipa Na M-Pesa has grown since its introduction in 2013. This gives an idea why Safaricom is hard at work to improve the Lipa Na M-Pesa service with the latest innovation being the M-Pesa 1 Tap which will be followed by the release of a new M-Pesa API.
M-Pesa’s revenue stands at 55.1 billion shillings. Other stats:
- M-Pesa has 19 million active monthly users which is a 14.6% growth from last year.
- M-Pesa agents increased by 35% to hit 130,000 agents.
- There are over 50,000 Lipa Na M-Pesa tills as of Q1 2017.
- 7 million shillings in loans issued monthly via M-Pesa.
- There are at least 10 M-Pesa transactions per person every month.
Data
According to the financials, mobile data revenue stood at Ksh.29.29 billion – a 38.5% growth from last year’s Ksh.21.15 billion. The average revenue per user stands at Ksh.153 per month, which is a 17% growth, year on year.
Data enabled devices rose to 41% of all phones in the market, a 10% growth from last year.
Safaricom revealed that they have 16.6 million monthly active mobile data customers and each user consumes about 269MBs per month (a 52% growth YoY).
The growth in data can be attributed to the increasing number of bundle options Safaricom offers, from daily, weekly to monthly data bundles at different price points. The next move by Safaricom will most likely be to improve on its data offerings.
Despite this growth, the cry for cheaper data options continue to be echoed among Kenyans.
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