M-pesa yesterday marked 10 years since it was launched on 6th March 2007. To some of us it feels like it has been around forever. A true earnings report done by audit firm KPMG indicated that customers have been the biggest beneficiaries of the system. To which I agree to a larger extent due to the fact that it has made moving money easier and more convenient.
The ten year study of M-pesa’s impact found that the social value generated by the service grew from Ksh. 83 million in 2007 to Ksh. 184 billion by the end of March 2016. Customers were the biggest beneficiaries of this social value receiving a return of Ksh. 160 billion in the financial year ending 2016.
In the 10 years of its existence, Kenyans have established Mpesa as the world’s leading mobile money platform by leveraging the power of the mobile phone to achieve convenience in different aspects of their lives. Customers have made savings in time and also increased safety and wellbeing as a result of not needing to carry cash. KPMG noted that the only negative impact, experienced by a very small number of individuals, was a reduction in wellbeing as a result of spending less time with family members, as they no longer need to receive financial contributions in person.
By 2016, each M-PESA customer had seen social value linked to the use of M-PESA of Sh9,679 in the course of the year, up from Sh3,202 when the product started in 2007. Over the same period, customers grew from 20,000 in March 2007 to more than 16 million by March 2016, while the value of transactions grew from Sh10.3 million to Sh5.2 trillion over the same period.
The True Earnings report indicated that customers saw 63% of the social value experienced to be connected to the financial resilience that comes with receiving and having control over money. The second largest impact at 30% has been in the time and cost saved in using M-PESA compared to the alternatives, while 7% of the impact comes from access to credit and ability to purchase goods that customers would not have ordinarily been able to afford.
M-PESA agents experienced the second highest Social Value from M-PESA at Sh20.1 billion in the year ending March 2016. Individually, agents become the greatest beneficiaries of M-PESA’s, experiencing an average social value of Sh13,489 each year in the last ten years. The number of agents increased from 2,000 in 2007 to more than 101,000 at the end of March 2016, with many agents creating entire businesses out of M-PESA.
Separate findings by Financial Sector Deepening credit M-PESA with the growth of financial inclusion in the country, which grew by more than 50 percent in the last ten years to stand at 75.3% of Kenyans in 2016. The mobile phone is also the preferred mode of savings in the country, with 60% of Kenyans having their savings in services such as M-PESA, M-Shwari and KCB M-PESA.