Today marks the 18th anniversary of Safaricom’s mobile financial service, M-PESA, which debuted in March 2007.
Currently, M-PESA serves more than 70 million clients in more than 170 countries worldwide. More than a million companies and agents already use the mobile financial services provider in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the 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.
With more people across the continent shifting to smartphones and 3G and 4G broadband, M-PESA is 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 storefront providing their services virtually through M-PESA Mini apps.
Read: Safaricom Launches M-PESA Powered Investment Fund
To commemorate its 18th anniversary, M-PESA is initiating a campaign that will involve a wide range of stakeholders, including consumers, investors, communities, technology partners, staff members, regulators, and the media. The goal of the campaign is to reassure consumers of Safaricom’s dedication to offering a safe, worry-free financial environment.
“In the last 18 years, M-PESA has transformed the lives of millions of customers, empowering them with useful and affordable financial services. 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,” remarked Dr. Peter Ndegwa.
Safaricom has launched the Ziidi Investment platform with the Ziidi Money Market Fund, which now boasts over one million opt-ins and is set to introduce Shariah-compliant investments with the aim of growing 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.
