M-Pesa, the world’s leading mobile money service has recorded 6 billion transactions in 2016 according to Vodafone Group.
The platform, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with services being offered in 10 countries: Albania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Romania and Tanzania.
As of the end of December 2016, M-Pesa served almost 29.5 million active customers through a network of more than 287,400 agents. During 2016, the service processed around 6 billion transactions, peaking in December 2016 at 529 transactions every second.
M-Pesa was launched by Vodafone’s Kenyan associate, Safaricom, on 6 March 2007. The service is designed to enable customers safely and securely to send, receive and store money via a basic mobile phone and, more recently in some markets, using a smartphone app.
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Vodafone Group’s managing director of M-Pesa, Michael Joseph, said, “M-Pesa is a revolution that has empowered tens of millions of people in some of the poorest communities in the world to start and grow businesses and gain greater financial resilience. All of us at Vodafone are very proud of how M-Pesa has enhanced our customers’ daily lives and helped them plan for the future with confidence.”
From 2009 onwards, Vodafone began to add international money transfer capabilities to the M-Pesa service. Customers in Kenya and Tanzania can now transmit and receive funds directly across the border, recognised by the World Bank as the most cost-effective means of doing so. Vodafone has partnered with Homesend, TransferTo, and MFS Africa to expand money transfer and continues to explore potential relationships with other international money transfer services.
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Andrew Dunnett, Director of the Vodafone Foundation, added, “M-Pesa is a critical component of many of the Vodafone Foundation’s core health services, such as theText to Treatment services we have launched in Lesotho and Tanzania. These services dramatically improve quality of life and in many cases, save lives – particularly in some of the remote and isolated areas that we serve.”