Safaricom has signed up half-a-million traders who are transacting Kes773 billion every month on the telco's improved M-PESA platform.

Fillings by Vodafone at the US Securities Exchange shows inclusion of applications and Pochi La Biashara has grown use by traders across seven markets.

Vodafone launched M-PESA Africa joint venture with Safaricom to accelerate growth of the service across the continent 18 months ago.

At the moment, M-PESA is available in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt markets.

The upgraded platform includes an open API in use by more than 45,000 developers and 200,000 businesses, the M-PESA for Business Super App, the Transacting Till that enables businesses to go beyond receiving payments to making business payments, and Pochi La Biashara that enables small businesses to separate their personal and business funds.

“Collectively, more than 500,000 businesses transact more than US$7 billion (Kes773 billion) every month on M-PESA,” Vodafone Group CEO, Nick Read, noted.

In 2007, Safaricom and Vodafone launched M-PESA in Kenya as a way for customers to instantly send money to each other.

For many customers, the service became their first and often only access to financial services, propelling its fast growth and adoption across the country.

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Today M-PESA is a two sided network that provides a wide variety of financial services to both businesses and individual customers.

Customers can send and receive money, make and receive business payments, pay bills, make and receive international money transfers, save and access credit, all from the convenience of their mobile phones and wherever they may be in the countries served, utilising more than 500,000 M-PESA agents.

In June 2021, the M-PESA Super App was launched across all its markets.

The M-PESA Super App introduced one of the service's key innovations in the form of mini mobile apps which enable customers and businesses to accomplish day-to-day tasks, from shopping to accessing government services, without having to download different apps for each task.

In addition, the M-PESA Super App provides the more than 50 million customers with a modern, intuitive and secure way to transact on their smartphones.

M-PESA's second facet focuses on businesses by expanding its ecosystem to deliver innovative solutions across micro businesses, SMEs and large businesses.

Into the future, the service has been investing in new technologies and partnerships as it seeks to deepen financial health amongst its customers through products that encourage savings and lending, wealth management, and insurance.

M-PESA has equally expanded its partnerships with the aim of boosting remittances which empower customers to send and receive money across more than 200 countries and territories.

Across the seven markets, M-PESA has grown to reach 50 million monthly active customers, cementing its position as Africa's largest fintech platform.

The number of active M-PESA customers has doubled in the past five years.

The milestone also comes just 18 months after Safaricom and Vodacom launched the M-PESA Africa joint venture to accelerate growth of the service across the continent.

M-PESA Africa has been delivering digital platforms as part of its focus to be the largest fintech and digital ecosystem across the continent.

M-PESA became an even more important platform for customers during the pandemic with transaction volumes increasing 44 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of the current financial year.

The number of transactions grew to 4.5 billion in the quarter with a total transaction value of Kes9.4 trillion (€63 billion).

Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read said they are still in the early stages of M-PESA's development and will continue to invest to capture this significant opportunity building value for shareholders.

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