Innovations pay off as M-PESA active users per month cross 30 million
Rising subscriptions by businesses for the use of Lipa Na M-PESA service have seen global cash transfer platform M-PESA record over 30 million active users per month.
M-PESA has experienced explosive growth in business usage with the number of entities accepting payments via Lipa Na M-PESA service more than doubling to over 387,000 today from 173,000 in April 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.
The growth in M-PESA customer usage has also been driven by the launch of various innovations over the years including financial services such as M-Shwari, KCB M-PESA and Fuliza.
The tech giant 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.
The milestone of over 30 million users per month comes just days after M-PESA marked its 15th anniversary. The cash transfer service went live on 6th March 2007.
“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.
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Currently, 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.
By empowering millions of customers to transact, save or borrow money through their mobile phone, M-PESA has driven financial inclusion in Kenya to more than 82 percent of the adult population from a low of 25 percent and the platform generates over Kes82.65 billion ($826 million) in revenue per year.
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.
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.
In addition, M-PESA Africa is looking at growing continental and global partnerships with other financial service providers to introduce new International Money Transfer solutions.
