Mobile money platform M-Pesa has crossed 30 million monthly customers in Kenya, a few days after it marked 15 years since its launch.
Kenyan customers account 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.
“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, the telco’s CEO.
The latest data is up from 28.7 million monthly active subscribers at the end of September 2021, representing a 4.5% growth.
The telco has attributed its growth in customer usage to various innovations over the years, including financial services such as M-Shwari, KCB M-PESA and Fuliza.
Safaricom has also, over the years, established both local and global partnerships enabling customers to send and receive money and make payments across the world, including with PayPal, AliExpress and Western Union.
In the last two years, the usage of M-Pesa by businesses has grown exponentially, 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 now.
We maintain this commitment into the future to deliver digital financial innovations as more of our customers shift to smartphones. pic.twitter.com/p87nL0eVrx
— Peter Ndegwa (@PeterNdegwa_) March 11, 2022
Safaricom and Vodacom are focusing on growing the service in other markets to bring it to the same level of maturity as Kenya.
The two organisations announced the launch of M-Pesa Africa in April 2020 to consolidate M-PESA’s resources, strategy, and roadmap across the continent.
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 businesses, with the customer app available in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Further, M-Pesa Africa is looking at growing continental and global partnerships with other financial service providers to introduce new International Money Transfer solutions.
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