Safaricom’s mobile money service M-PESA has today marked 18 years since its launch in March 2007. M-PESA is currently available in more than 170 countries globally serving over 70 million customers. The mobile financial services provider has grown to over one million businesses and agents in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Democratic republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt.
The service 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.
To mark its 18th anniversary, M-PESA has embarked on a series of activities across the country aimed at engaging the ecosystem stakeholders, including customers, investors, communities, technology partners, employees, regulators, and the media.
“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.
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 store front providing their services virtually through M-PESA Mini apps.
As part of the 18-year celebrations, Safaricom has launched Ziidi Investment platform with Ziidi Money Market Fund which now boasts of over one million opt-ins and is set to introduce Shariah compliant investments.
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.