M-Pesa hits 50 million monthly users

Safaricom’s fintech gem M-Pesa now has 50 million monthly active users.

The milestone comes 14 years since the launch of the mobile-money service in Kenya and nearly two years since the launch of the M-Pesa Africa Joint Venture.

The venture which pits Safaricom and its parent firm Vodacom has allowed M-Pesa to spread its tentacles across the continent including Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt.

“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 honor to this achievement, we are reiterating our commitment and deepening our focus on more innovations that will further transform the lives of our customers,” said Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, the Managing Director for M-Pesa Africa.

According to prior disclosures by Safaricom, about 28 million of the active monthly users are in Kenya as of March 31 this year.

This means that M-Pesa has as many users in its secondary markets as it has in its home country.

M-Pesa contributed to about one third of Safaricom’s service revenue in its fiscal year to March 31 or a representative Ksh.82.6 billion.

The mobile-money service is shortly set to surpass voice as Safaricom’s biggest revenue earner.

The bulk of M-Pesa revenues in the year stemmed from withdrawals at Ksh.16.9 billion ahead of transfers and payments.

Kenyans transacted Ksh.22.04 trillion on M-Pesa in 12 months to the end of March this year, a sum equivalent to twice the size of the Kenyan economy.

The entire value of transactions was pushed through just 11.7 billion individual transactions.
This puts the average transaction value on M-Pesa at just over Ksh.1800.

In April last year, Safaricom and Vodacom bought the rights to M-Pesa from Vodafone for an estimated Ksh.1.4 billion allowing the pair to expand the outfit across Africa.