Telco Safaricom has revealed that its active M-PESA users have surpassed the 30-million mark. To note, this is just for Kenya customers.
The development follows the product’s 15th birthday following its launch back in March 2007.
To this end, Kenya remains M-PESA’s most active market accounting for more than 30 million of the service’s 51 million customers across Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt.
The growth in M-PESA customer usage has been driven by the launch of various innovations over the years including financial services such as Lipa na M-PESA, M-Shwari, KCB M-PESA and Fuliza.
Safaricom has equally established both local and global partnerships that enable customers to send and receive money, and to make payments across the world including with PayPal, AliExpress and Western Union.
According to the operator, the last two years have seen M-PESA record explosive growth in business usage with the number of businesses accepting payments on its Lipa Na M-PESA service more than doubling from 173,000 in April 2020 to more than 387,000 today.
Safaricom and Vodacom are focusing on growing the service in other markets with a goal of bringing them to the same level of maturity as Kenya. The two organisations announced the launch of M-PESA Africa in April 2020 with a goal of consolidating M-PESA’s resources, strategy and roadmap across the continent.
To expand its reach even further, M-PESA Africa is investing in a common platform that will empower all markets to offer M-PESA’s entire range of services and products.
It has also invested in an M-PESA Super App both for customers and for businesses, with the customer app available in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The app has since garnered 9 million downloads.
Lastly, M-PESA Africa is looking at growing continental and global partnerships with other financial service providers to introduce new International Money Transfer solutions.
“M-PESA’s success has been achieved on the back of consistent focus on the needs of our customers by ensuring that we are constantly delivering innovations that add value to their lives. We thank all our customers for getting us to the 30 million monthly active customers milestone. As the country goes digital with growing smartphone usage, we are committing to continue exploring and delivering life-changing innovations in a digital world,” said Peter Ndegwa, CEO – Safaricom.
