M-Pesa at 18 celebrates its journey since launching in March 2007. The mobile financial service now operates in over 170 countries, serving more than 70 million customers. With a network of over one million businesses and agents, M-Pesa has expanded across Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, 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.
The success of this mobile money transfer and payment solution is based on its accessibility, universal nature of the service, making it possible for millions to perform instant, secure and reliable financial transactions using their mobile phones.
M-Pesa at 18 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. The campaign will also serve as a platform to reassure its M-PESA customers of Safaricom’s commitment to provide a worry-free, safe and secure financial ecosystem to its customers.
“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.
With more people across the continent shifting to smartphones, 3G and 4G broadband, M-PESA is today 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 store front providing their services virtually through M-PESA Mini apps.
Over the past two decades, M-PESA’s services has quadrupled, leading to financial inclusion that has helped drive national economic development.
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 with an aim to grow 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.
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