Safaricom on Thursday announced that active monthly users of its mobile money platform, M-Pesa has now topped 30 million in Kenya and about 51 million across Africa.

The company stated that while M-Pesa is active in DRC, Egypt, Ghana, Mozambique and Tanzania, usage in Kenya “has been remarkable”.

This is largely due to tie-in with value added services such as micro credit, bill and merchant payments, remittance receipts and funds transfers.

“M-Pesa has crossed 30 million customers using the service every month in Kenya (which) remains M-Pesa’s most active market,” reads an excerpt from a statement released by the company.

Active monthly users numbered 21 million for the remaining Africa operations including Lesotho.

Peter Ndengwa, CEO of Safaricom said: “As the country goes digital with growing smartphone usage, we are committing to continue exploring and delivering life-changing innovations in a digital world. M-Pesa’s success has been achieved on the back of consistent focus on the needs of our customers by ensuring that we are constantly delivering innovations that add value to their lives.”

M-Pesa has inked partnerships with remittance companies such as Paypay, AliExpress and Western Union. In addition, the number of businesses that accept payments on its Lipa Na M-Pesa service has doubled from 173 000 in April 2020 to more than 387 000 currently.

Safaricom and Vodacom (which prepped to offer mobile money services in Ethiopia after landing a mobile network permit) are now geared on “growing the MPESA service in other markets with a goal of bringing them to the same level of maturity as Kenya”.

Under the M-Pesa Africa establishment, Safaricom and Vodacom are investing in a “common platform that will empower all markets” to offer M-Pesa , with the Super App version of the platform now active in the DRC, Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique.