M-pesa has today announced that it has reached 50 million monthly active customers, strengthening its position as Africa’s largest fintech. The mobile money service was launched more than 14 years ago in Kenya.
Today, M-PESA is available in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt.
The milestone comes just 18 months after Safaricom and Vodacom launched the M-PESA Africa Joint Venture to accelerate growth of the service across the continent. M-PESA Africa has equally been striving to deliver digital platforms as part of its focus to be the largest fintech and digital ecosystem across the continent.
“We are delighted to celebrate this remarkable milestone with our more than 50 million customers across the continent. ,” said Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, MD – M-Pesa Africa.
Read: Business Owners Can Now Make Payments Directly From Their MPesa Till Number
Since its launch in 2007, Mpesa has become the their first and often only access to financial services propelling its fast growth and adoption across the country.
Subsequently, the service has largely contributed to the growth of formal financial inclusion across the continent which has gone up by up to 55%.
M-pesa currently operates as a 2-sided network that provides a wide variety of financial services to both businesses and individual customers.
The mobile money transfer service allows customers to send and receive money, make and receive business payments, pay bills, make and receive international money transfers, save and access credit from the convenience of their mobile phones and wherever they may be in the countries served across more than 500,000 agents.
In June 2021, M-pesa began rolling out the M-pesa Super App across all its markets.
The Super App introduced Mini-Apps which enable customers and businesses to accomplish day-to-day tasks from shopping to accessing government services without having to download different apps for each task.
In addition, the M-pesa Super App provides customers a modern, intuitive and secure way to transact on their smartphones.
Read: How To Apply For A Short Term MPesa Paybill Number From Safaricom
M-Pesa’s second facet focuses on businesses by expanding its ecosystem to deliver innovative solutions across micro businesses, SMEs and large businesses.
These include an open API in use by more than 45,000 developers and 200,000 businesses, the M-PESA for Business Super App, the Transacting Till that enables businesses to go beyond receiving payments to making business payments, and Pochi La Biashara that enables small businesses to separate their personal and business funds.
Collectively, more than 500,000 businesses transact more than $7 billion every month on M-PESA.
The service has been investing 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 in the future.
M-PESA has equally expanded its partnerships in an aim to boost remittances which empower customers to send and receive money across more than 200 countries and territories.
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