Safaricom’s M-PESA has announced that it has reached 50 million active users in Africa.
By sheer numbers, this makes it the most popular mobile money platform in the continent, and Africa’s largest fintech.
The product was launched back in 2007. It has been supplemented with new features and services that have helped it be the leading platform it is today.
First launched in Kenya, M-PESA has since been exported to other countries. It is available in Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana, and Egypt. The majority of its users are of course found here in Kenya.
M-PESA has equally expanded its partnerships with an aim to boost remittances which empower customers to send and receive money across more than 200 countries and territories.
The development comes barely two years after the operator and Vodacom launched the M-PESA Africa Joint Venture that seeks to accelerate the growth of the product in the content.
Safaricom further says that M-PESA has been instrumental in the growth of formal financial inclusion in Africa, pushing the numbers up to 55 percent.
As known, the current form of M-PESA is two-pronged: it provides many financial services to both individuals and businesses. Customers can send and receive cash, make bull payments and receive funds from people in other parts of the world. Businesses can also process payments using M-PESA.
At the moment, Safaricom says it has more than 500K M-PESA agents.
More than 500,000 businesses transact more than $7 billion every month on M-PESA.
Just the other month, M-PESA received a dedicated smartphone app that we have since looked into. The superapp is a vital tool that has a ton of features that can be tracked here.
“14 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,” said Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, MD – M-PESA Africa.
