Leading mobile money service M-Pesa had a massive quarter, growing its revenue by 34.4% ($106 million). The business also added 400,000 new users to its customer base. M-Pesa currently serves 51 million customers in 7 countries with last-mile financial services.
Interestingly, lending and savings played a significant role in the company’s great outing. According to Vodacom CEO, Shameel Joosub, nearly 60% of the subsidiary’s growth in the last quarter came from lending and savings. “We added 400 000 M-Pesa customers in the quarter, with penetration of our one-month active base at 45.0%,” he further stated.
Commenting on the company’s impressive performance, Joosub mentioned that M-Pesa facilitated loans worth $238 million, thanks to offerings like Songesha and Txuna in Tanzania and Mozambique respectively. The Vodacom boss also said that the brand’s transaction values processed on their platform increased by 5.8% ($368 billion).
As the above figures show, the brand is on an upward trajectory. And that’s why Joosub highlighted the importance of financial inclusion, a cause that M-Pesa is championing in Africa, and recently beyond. “Financial services remains a clear strategic priority for the group and produced a 46.2% increase in revenue to surpass the R3 billion mark in a quarter for the first time,” the CEO remarked.
Last week, Bangladesh and Pakistan became the two new countries to join M-Pesa’s network. This followed a partnership between Safaricom and TetraPay as part of efforts to enable customers to send and receive money from the above countries.
Read also: Safaricom now allows Kenyans pay for goods with internet data balance
M-Pesa set for Ethiopia launch in September
Early this year, Technext reported that Safaricom, M-Pesa’s parent company, was set to roll out the mobile money service to the Ethiopian market. Back then, there was no definite date but now there is. The mobile money service will be available for Ethiopians before Q3 ends by September.
Vodacom said, “Our recently launched Ethiopian business, Safaricom Ethiopia, has made good progress since its commercial launch in October 2022, already reaching 2.7 million customers and is set to launch M-Pesa services in the second quarter [three months to September.”
According to Vodacom, M-Pesa’s presence in Ethiopia would greatly benefit the market’s operations revenue and increase its profit-making goal set for 2027. Recall that Safaricom expanded its telecommunications service to Ethiopia in October last year. What’s more, it went on to onboard 740,000 new subscribers by the end of the same month.
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