At least two million customers have joined Safaricom’s M-Pesa since April raising the product’s growth past 32 million customers, even before the telco launches the service in the dense Ethiopia market.
The company said active monthly M-Pesa users have risen from 30 million to 32 million, as more Kenyans adopt and enhance mobile money usage.
“During the reporting period (April 2021 to March 2022), our biggest innovation, M-Pesa, which celebrated 15 years also celebrated 30 million customer mark- monthly active customers. And I dare say that since then, we’ve seen another 2 million join the franchise,” Safaricom Chief Executive Officer, Peter Ndegwa said.
Mr Ndegwa noted that the franchise’s social impact increased by 14 per cent in the year to March 2022, to Sh275 billion.
The growth is even as the telco plans to launch mobile money services in its new market Ethiopia after getting approval from authorities when it launched services this month, penetrating the second most populous country in the continent, with a population more than double that of Kenya.
At least 2.5 million customers have downloaded the MySafaricom App which offers all Safaricom services in a centralized platform, for both pre-paid and post-paid customers.
Of the downloads, the company states that 50 per cent are using the App actively, denoting a cautious adoption on its usage by customers.
Safaricom also said that, more Kenyans are adopting use of smartphones, with the number of its customers using the modern gadgets growing from 16.7 million to 18.5 million, between April 2021 and March 2022.
The number of 4G-enabled smartphones among Safaricom users grew by 2.6 million to 11.1 million. The growth is 247 per cent compared to the 3.2 million 4G-enabled smartphones by March 2019.
Source: https://nation.africa/kenya/business/m-pesa-monthly-active-users-hit-32-million-3998120