Safaricom’s M-PESA has crossed 30 million active monthly customers in Kenya with the Lipa Na M-PESA service being a key growth driver.
According to the telco, the last two years have seen the mobile money service 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.
“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,” said Peter Ndegwa, CEO – Safaricom.
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 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.
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.
Currently, M-Pesa has surpassed voice as Safaricom’s main revenue stream.
According to the telco’s H1 2021/22 results, M-Pesa revenue was Sh52.3 billion surpassing voice earnings which were at ShSh41 billion.
