M-PESA has now reached 30 million monthly users in Kenya, according to Safaricom. The achievement comes just a few days after M-PESA celebrated its 15th anniversary since its inception on March 6, 2007.
Kenya continues to be M-PESA’s most active market, with more than 30 million customers spread across Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Lesotho, Ghana, and Egypt.
“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.
The development of many innovations over the years, including financial services such as M-Shwari, KCB M-PESA, and Fuliza, has fueled the growth in M-PESA customer growth. Safaricom has also created local and global relationships with PayPal, AliExpress, and Western Union, allowing clients to send and receive money and make payments all over the world.
M-PESA’s usage has exploded in the last two years, with the number of businesses accepting Lipa Na M-PESA payments more than doubling from 173,000 in April 2020 to more than 387,000 now.
Safaricom and Vodacom are concentrating their efforts on expanding the service in other areas, with the goal of bringing them up to Kenya’s level of maturity. 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 putting money into a common platform that will allow all markets to offer the full range of M-PESA services and products. It’s also developed an M-PESA Super App for both customers and businesses, with the customer app available in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. M-PESA Africa is also trying to expand its continental and worldwide ties with other financial service providers in order to offer additional International Money Transfer solutions.