M-Pesa, a money transfer service introduced in March 2007, celebrated its 15th anniversary today, thanks to Vodafone and its African subsidiaries Vodacom and Safaricom.
M-Pesa has evolved to service more than 51 million customers and 465,000 businesses since its inception in Kenya. In Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana, and Egypt, 600,000 agents supply the service. M-Pesa performs more than 61 million transactions each day, making it Africa’s largest fintech provider, and it has enlisted the help of 42,000 external developers to develop new features for the platform.
M-Pesa is turning into a digital financial services provider as more individuals on the African continent switch to smartphones and use 3G and 4G broadband. M-Pesa Africa announced the M-Pesa Super App and M-Pesa Business Super App in 2021, allowing any business on the platform to establish a virtual storefront and provide services via M-Pesa Mini Apps.
“As the original mobile money service, M-Pesa has been the most significant driver of financial inclusion in Africa over the past 15 years. It is the continent’s largest fintech platform and provides access to financial services for more than 50m people – in a secure, affordable, and convenient way. M-Pesa is a great example of how a regional platform can evolve and grow to meet and anticipate customer needs using smartphone technology – from peer-to-peer money transfer, to payment of utility bills, to enabling the payroll of businesses, and to financial services such as micro-loans.” said Nick Read, Chief Executive Officer, Vodafone Group.
The M-Pesa Super App is intended to be a customer’s lifestyle companion, linking them to services like as shopping, restaurants, and food delivery, transportation, government services, and much more. Since its inception, the M-Pesa Super App has been downloaded by over 9 million customers and 320,000 businesses.
M-Pesa Africa is redesigning the M-Pesa platform in addition to the Super App to accommodate expanded digital services, faster development of new products, and better stability and reliability. The M-Pesa APIs will be expanded as part of the platform update, giving developers even more access to the service and allowing them to launch new innovations.
Reward programme
- Safaricom will reward 15 customers and 15 businesses every hour for 15 days from March 7th 2022 to March 22nd 2022
- You’re eligible if you send money or make payments through the M-PESA Super App and M-PESA Business Super App.
- The winners will be randomly selected and will get back 15% of the transaction value up to a maximum of KSh. 1,000.
