M-PESA, Africa's most popular mobile money platform, reported strong half-year earnings for the period ending September 2024.

Safaricom, M-PESA's parent company, released its interim results yesterday, revealing the mobile money platform's Group revenue increased by 13.1% to $1.4 billion (KSh. 179.9 billion), with $1.38 billion (KSh. 177.4 billion) from Kenya and $20.21 million (KSh. 2.6 billion) from Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia PLC.

M-PESA is Africa's most successful mobile payment service, having debuted in Kenya in 2007 and grown to become a key driver of financial inclusion with millions of customers in seven countries.

In the current reporting period, M-PESA contributed 42.9% of Safaricom's service revenue, totalling $600.09 million (KSh. 77.2 billion), representing a 16.6% increase over the previous six months.

Safaricom Kenya's monthly active M-PESA customers increased by 4.1% to 33.4 million, Lipa Na M-PESA merchants reached 658,669, and agents increased by 2.4% to 266,071.

Transaction volume increased by 30.6% to nearly 17 billion transactions during the six-month period, with $162.07 billion (KSh. 20.85 trillion) traded, representing a 10.7% increase.

The monthly average revenue per user increased by 13.1% to $3.03 (KSh. 389.27), while chargeable transactions per customer per month increased from 29.87 to 37.37.

Safaricom reported that more than $4.37 billion (KSh. 562.5 billion) in 'affordable credit' was distributed to over 7.5 million customers and 52,000 merchants.

Through Lipa Mdogo Mdogo, Safaricom said, it enabled over 1.6 million customers to purchase their first smartphones with daily payments of as low as $0.16 (KSh. 20.)

Lipa Mdogo Mdogo is a popular phone financing program in Kenya.

Turning to cashless payment service, Lipa Na M-PESA, Safaricom said merchant payments increased to $7.56 billion (KSh. 972.6 billion) from over 1.4 billion transactions for the 6 months.

Lipa na M-PESA is a cashless payment service that allows customers to make payments for goods.

Further, the telco said: “The M-PESA Super Apps continued to see increased usage with more than 3.6 million customers and 268,000 businesses using the Customer and Business Super Apps. More than 399.7 million transactions were made on the Customer Super App and over 39.6 million on the Business Super app, with $8.32 billion ( KSh. 1.07 trillion) and $2.76 billion (KSh. 355 billion) transacted respectively. The Customer Super app has 84 embedded mini apps while the Business Super App has 6 mini apps.”

More than 1.2 million customers used M-PESA for international money transfers worth over $2.07 billion (KSh. 266 billion) with more than 20.6 million transactions made, according to the telco.

Moving on, Safaricom said significant growth was recorded among micro-merchants using the Pochi La Biashara wallet to separate their business funds reaching more than 869,000.

It added: “The number of customers using the M-PESA Visa GlobalPay Card to make international card payments rose to more than 172,000 with over $31.09 million (Ksh. 4 billion) transacted across more than 2.9 million transactions.”

Safaricom Kenya is still piloting Mali, a money market fund under M-PESA, with over 132,600 customers and about $23.32 million (KSh. 3 billion) in assets under management.

Safaricom Ethiopia has 8.31 million M-PESA clients, including more than 1 million active users, over 87,800 merchants, and over 29,200 agents.

According to the telco, more than 86.5 million M-PESA transactions were completed in Ethiopia during the last six months, totalling more than $85.04 million (KSh. 10.94 billion).