Safaricom’s mobile financial service M-PESA has today marked 18 years since its launch in March 2007. M-PESA is currently available in more than 170 countries globally serving over 70 million customers.
The mobile financial services provider has grown to over one million businesses and agents in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Democratic republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt.
The service also supports over 55,000 integrations on its Daraja platform which hosts more than 100,000 developers. With its current capacity of 4000 transactions per second, the platform processes close to 100 million transactions a day, making it Africa’s largest fintech solution.
The success of this mobile money transfer and payment solution is based on its accessibility, universal nature of the service, making it possible for millions to perform instant, secure and reliable financial transactions using their mobile phones.
To mark its 18th anniversary, M-PESA has embarked on a series of activities across the country aimed at engaging the ecosystem stakeholders, including customers, investors, communities, technology partners, employees, regulators, and the media. The campaign will also serve as a platform to reassure its M-PESA customers of Safaricom’s commitment to provide a worry-free, safe and secure financial ecosystem to its customers.
“In the last 18 years, M-PESA has transformed the lives of millions of customers, empowering them with useful and affordable financial services,” Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa said. ‘With increasing smartphone usage across the continent, we are transitioning to be a digital financial services provider connecting customers and businesses to opportunities and powering their growth through our tech-powered solutions.”
With more people across the continent shifting to smartphones, 3G and 4G broadband, M-PESA is today evolving to become a digital financial services provider. In 2021, M-PESA Africa launched the M-PESA Super App with a business proposition the M-PESA Business App, which enables any business on the service to run a virtual store front providing their services virtually through M-PESA Mini apps.
Over the past two decades, M-PESA’s services have quadrupled, leading to financial inclusion that has helped drive national economic development.
As part of the 18-year celebrations, Safaricom has launched Ziidi Investment platform with Ziidi Money Market Fund which now boasts of over one million opt-ins and is set to introduce Shariah compliant investments with an aim to grow customers’ wealth. Ziidi leverages the convenience of M-PESA to give customers a simple, faster and smarter way to invest and grow wealth.
According to Esther Waititu, Safaricom’s chief financial services officer, the company is scaling the M-PESA platform to support additional digital services, faster development of new products, and to achieve increased stability and reliability.
“M-PESA’s future success will be based on its ease of use, and its seamless integration with other services and products to give customers a comprehensive suite of financial services at their fingertips. M-PESA represents the future of mobile financial services across the continent,” she stated.
As M-PESA continues to innovate more products and services, and launch new ones, it looks forward to celebrating many more anniversaries with its staff and customers in the years to come.
About Safaricom
Safaricom is the leading telecommunication company in East Africa. Our purpose is to transform lives by connecting people to people, people to opportunities and people to information. We keep over 45.9 million customers connected and play a critical role in the society, supporting over 1.1 million jobs both directly and indirectly while our total economic value was estimated at KES 542 billion ($ 4.2 billion) for the 12 months through March 2023.
Listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange and with annual revenues of close to KES 335.4 billion as at March 2024. Safaricom provides connectivity through wide range of technology, 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G in aggregate covering over 99% of Kenya’s population.
We run the world’s largest mobile payment system and Africa’s largest Fintech, M-PESA, the world’s first mobile money transfer system. By empowering over 32.1 million customers to transact, save or borrow money through their mobile phone, M-PESA has driven financial inclusion in Kenya to 83.7% in 2021 of the adult population from a low of 26.7% in 2006 and generated over KES 139.9 Billion in revenue as at FY24.
Our subsidiary, Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia, has deployed world class network and services to contribute to Ethiopia’s digital transformation.
Safaricom is an equal opportunity employer, actively recruiting staff from different backgrounds reflecting the communities that we serve. We are committed to equal gender representation at all levels. Our target is to achieve 50:50 senior management gender parity by 2025.
As part of our ongoing commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we continue to work towards improving energy and resource efficiency in our network and facilities to reduce carbon emissions and our fuel consumption. We remain committed to becoming a Net Zero carbon-emitting company by 2050.
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