While it may have failed to launch here in South Africa, M-Pesa has continued to prove popular in other African nations.
This morning, Vodacom Group announced that the M-Pesa ecosystem now boasts 50 million month active users.
While M-Pesa was launched over 14 years ago, in the last five years the user base has almost doubled. Growth of M-Pesa was also helped along by a joint venture between Vodacom and Safaricom launched 18 months ago that accelerated the growth of the fintech platform. That venture was dubbed M-Pesa Africa.
“As Africa’s biggest mobile money platform, M-Pesa has been one of the continent’s most astonishing financial services success stories, helping millions of people improve their lives and start businesses though financial inclusion. That said, we are still in the early stages of M-Pesa’s evolution and remain firmly committed to investing significantly into expanding the M-Pesa ecosystem, particularly through our Super App platform, so that we continue to democratise financial services,” explained Vodacom Group chief executive officer, Shameel Joosub.
M-Pesa saw a massive increase in traffic during the pandemic. According to Vodacom, transaction volumes increased by 44 percent during the beginning of the year. At present, the total transaction volume amounts to €63 billion for the current financial year.
The fintech solution has proved to be incredibly popular in Kenya where it is lead to a 56 percent increase in access to financial services and products. Research published in the journal Science from 2016 estimates that M-Pesa lifted 194 000 households, or two percent of Kenyan households, out of poverty.
“14 years ago, we launched M-Pesa to connect our customers to each other and to different opportunities. We are delighted to celebrate this remarkable milestone with our more than 50 million customers across the continent. As an honour to this achievement, we are reiterating our commitment and deepening our focus on more innovations that will further transform the lives of our customer,” said managing director for M-Pesa Africa, Sitoyo Lopokoiyit.
M-Pesa is available in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt.
Vodacom has stated that it will continue to invest 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”.
