M-PESA Africa

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the home of mobile money.

For long, travellers to China have struggled to make payments as millions of businesses in the country only accept local cashless payments. We are excited to announce that we are expanding our partnership with Thunes and in coming months, Safaricom PLC customers in Kenya and Vodacom Tanzania Plc customers in Tanzania will be able to scan to pay at Chinese merchants from their M-PESA Super App. Customers will not need to make Forex conversions as payments will be made directly from their M-PESA account, providing unparalleled convenience whenever they travel to China.

At an event graced by Kipchumba Murkomen - Kenya's Cabinet Secretary for Youth Affairs, Creative Economy and Sports, and led by our CEO, Sitoyo Lopokoiyit MBS we today unveiled our Safaricom PLC M-PESA's sponsorship of the Kenya Rugby Union Sevens National Men's team - Shujaa, and the National Women's Sevens team - Lionesses for two years. With an overall value of more than KSh. 100 million, the sponsorship marks the brand's return to rugby sponsorship, with a renewed emphasis on sustainability. The sponsorship will support Team Shujaa's and Team Lionesses' player and supporting staff salaries, health insurance for the entire team and their immediate families, airtime and roaming allowances when the teams travel, advertising support to grow the team's fan bases, and much more. The two teams will showcase M-PESA's brand around the world, especially our international money transfer services, as Shujaa mark their return to the International Rugby Sevens, and Lionesses having finished second in the recent continental championships.

The M-PESA Super App continues to be a continental leader with more than 5.3 million customers using it every month. We are proud to welcome the Dar es salaam Stock Exchange who recently launched their mini app within the Vodacom Tanzania Plc M-PESA Super App empowering any Tanzanian with a smartphone to trade shares wherever they are, truly democratising access. With Mini Apps, any business can now provide their own full-feature app embedded within the M-PESA Super App, empowering any customer to access all their services, shop for products, and make payments securely and conveniently in one place. Download the M-PESA Super App here https://linktr.ee/mpesaapp

Vodacom has announced group results for the 6 months ending September 2024, recording strong performance from M-PESA. 12 month transaction value rose to more than $421 billion, an average of more than $1.2 billion a day. 38.5 billion transactions were made on M-PESA, up 34.2% year-on-year. Driving this growth is our double-sided ecosystem connecting more than 60 million customers, with the number of merchants growing to more than 1,158,000 and agents to more than 714,000. Underscoring our strategy around a double-sided ecosystem that provides customers and businesses with more solutions that transform their lives, new financial services such as savings, loans, and merchant offerings contributed more than 40% of M-PESA revenue in the period. Our M-PESA Super App for customers and businesses is at the core of the 2 sided ecosystem, with usage growing to more than 5.3 million customers every month. Over the coming months, Vodacom and Safaricom PLC will continue to roll out a single unified customer M-PESA Super App for all services.

Safaricom PLC has announced Half Year results for the period ending September 2024, reporting 13.1% growth in Group revenue to KSh. 179.9 billion, with KSh. 177.4 billion from Kenya and KSh. 2.6 billion from Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia PLC. M-PESA contributed 42.9% to Safaricom's service revenue, totalling KSh. 77.2 billion, marking a 16.6% growth for the six-month period. For Safaricom Kenya, monthly active M-PESA customers grew by 4.1% to 33.4 million, while Lipa Na M-PESA merchants reached 658,669 and agents increased by 2.4% to 266,071. Transaction volume grew by 30.6% to over 17 billion transactions for the 6 month period with KSh. 20.85 trillion transacted, reflecting a 10.7% increase. Monthly average revenue per user grew by 13.1% to KSh. 389.27, with chargeable transactions per customer per month rising from 29.87 to 37.37. More than KSh. 562.5 billion in affordable credit was disbursed to over 7.5 million customers and more than 52,000 merchants. Through Lipa Mdogo Mdogo, Safaricom has enabled over 1.6 million customers to purchase their first smartphones with daily payments of as low as KSh. 20. Lipa Na M-PESA merchant payments increased to KSh. 972.6 billion from over 1.4 billion transactions for the 6 months. The M-PESA Super Apps continued to see increased usage with more than 3.6 million customers and 268,000 businesses using the Customer and Business Super Apps. More than 399.7 million transactions were made on the Customer Super App and over 39.6 million on the Business Super app, with KSh. 1.07 trillion and KSh. 355 billion transacted respectively. The Customer Super app has 84 embedded mini apps while the Business Super App has 6 mini apps. More than 1.2 million customers used M-PESA for international money transfers worth over KSh. 266 billion with more than 20.6 million transactions made. Significant growth was recorded among micro-merchants using the Pochi La Biashara wallet to separate their business funds reaching more than 869,000. The number of customers using the M-PESA Visa GlobalPay Card to make international card payments rose to more than 172,000 with over Ksh. 4 billion transacted across more than 2.9 million transactions. Safaricom Kenya continues to pilot Mali, a money market fund within M-PESA, with more than 132,600 customers using the service and over KSh. 3 billion under management. Safaricom Ethiopia registered 8.31 million M-PESA customers with more than 1 million active, over 87,800 merchants and more than 29,200 agents. In the 6 months, more than 86.5 million M-PESA transactions were made in Ethiopia, totalling over KSh. 10.94 billion.

Meet the winning team! We are proud of our colleagues who scooped 3 awards at the Vodacom Group CEO Awards last week at a prestigious ceremony in Johannesburg, South Africa. Grace Njoroge won the Best Individual category for living true to our spirit of Customer Focus, where she went above and beyond her role to follow up and issue on behalf of a customer who had been referred to her. On top of resolving the issue, Grace then followed up with different M-PESA teams to work on an update to ensure the issue would not affect other customers in the future. We won a second award for "Best Innovator" for our eKYC solution that has increased compliance for new customers across the different markets while also enhancing the customer registration process and in turn protecting more than 60 million customers from potential fraud. Sumitomo Corporation was recognised in the Best Business Partner for their revolutionary partnership leading to the Safaricom Spark Venture Fund, which is catalysing the growth of 10 innovative startups that are developing solutions that create new opportunities for both customers and businesses on our ecosystem. Our fourth award for the night was picked by the IMT team for "Best Team" for the API hub revolutionising cross border money transfers by providing a single point of integration for partners to connect to the different M-PESA markets continuing to drive reduction in remittance costs to our target or less than 3% of the transaction value. As an icing on the cake, our HR team joined the Safaricom and Vodacom teams for the group award for Best Employer in the continent that we earlier won in the year. Congratulations to all our winners! Margaret Wandia Kioko Dorothy Ngumy Naima Yusuf Shakita Persad-Bridgraj Safeyah Dawray Clement G. Dennis Munyua

We are excited to join Safaricom PLC as they mark their 24th anniversary today. Our journey goes back to our shared purpose of Transforming Lives that saw Safaricom explore a value-added service as a way of promoting customer loyalty, leading to the launch of M-PESA in 2007. Safaricom's success as one of the world's leading and most innovative companies continues to be achieved on this purpose.

Sitoyo Lopokoiyit MBS, our MD, was recently on the Couchonomics with Arjun podcast with Arjun Vir Singh, where he spoke about M-PESA, the fintech landscape in Africa and globally, and where innovation is headed in the space. He spoke on the history of M-PESA and how we are a purpose-led organisation that has seen us grow to transform the lives of more than 60 million customers and 10 million businesses, driving more than 80 million transactions and $1.2 billion a day. In turn, this has led to the growth of financial inclusion in Africa from 23% to more than 85%. On some of the accelerators that have contributed to the growth of mobile money, the COVID-19 pandemic drove a lot of businesses to reinvent themselves around home delivery, while also reversing the flow of money between M-PESA and banks. Following the pandemic, the number of merchants accepting M-PESA payments grew from 400,000 to more than 1 million, while the movement of funds between banks and M-PESA reversed from 3X outflow from banks compared to inflows to now 5 times inflow to banks compared to outflows, as customers use M-PESA as a deposit channel. Other accelerants are remittances which have grown as M-PESA has reduced the cost from 10% to 15% transaction costs to 3%. We also see e-commerce from global marketplaces such as Shein, AliExpress leading to a growth in digital channel usage. Remittances "for a purpose" such as business-to-business and customer-to-business payments have further potential to drive growth. Sitoyo further spoke on how we are deepening our working relationship with regulators, M-PESA's role as a 3-sided ecosystem enabling anyone to build products and services on top of our platform, and our transition to financial health by providing customers with solutions to grow their investments. Watch the full podcast here: https://lnkd.in/dRNFx7vj

During his recent market visit to Mozambique, our MD Sitoyo Lopokoiyit MBS spoke to O.Económico on the journey and evolution of M-PESA, our current focus on supporting SMEs which employ more than 70% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa, alongside supporting governments in continued digitisation and access to public services. He mentioned that M-PESA is providing an open, secure platform that supports innovation, with more than 80,000 developers on it alongside banks providing their services through our APIs as well. This sees M-PESA process more than 180 million transactions worth more than $1.2 billion a day. As a result, countries with M-PESA have seen as much as a 1.5% GDP uplift from the use of mobile money services according to the GSMA . M-PESA's open platform provides a unique opportunity for Mozambique's young population to build and deliver homegrown solutions. We equally maintain our commitment to our purpose of "Transforming Lives" especially through women empowerment and in driving financial inclusion which stands at 49% in Mozambique. Initiatives aimed at growing financial inclusion include innovation that broadens access such as solutions for the visually impaired, and digitisation to democratise innovation and unlock more opportunities for customers. A key challenge to digitisation remains smartphone affordability with the need for prices to reduce from the current minimum of $50 to $15 to grow penetration from the current 35%. Sitoyo also spoke on the importance of fintech players constantly engaging regulators, and emphasised on the need to balance taxation with mobile money velocity which drives economic opportunities and participation. See full interview here