After its success in Kenya, Vodafone, the parent company of M-Pesa, Kenya’s mobile money platform said it will look to expand the service further into other parts of Africa.
M-Pesa has in the last four years given millions of people access to banking services without the need for a bank account. The platform was created by Safaricom.
The recent acquisition of Vodafone’s 35% stake by its South African subsidiary, Vodacom, was expected to bring about several changes and capital investment by the new vision.
“This removes that effect today,” Bob Collymore, who has led Safaricom since 2010, told Reuters. When analysts have previously queried why Safaricom did not expand into neighbouring markets such as Ethiopia, Collymore has said Kenya was still growing. Now, he says, the business is ready to expand.
“For us, the obvious advantage is that it (Vodafone/Vodacom deal) now gives us an opportunity to try some stuff overseas,” he said.
The platform, which even allows users to buy government securities in Kenya, has attracted attention from other African nations such as Liberia, Ethiopia and Togo.
“The courtship started a little while ago. We are respected in Kenya as the mobile money country,” Collymore said. Safaricom would now look at all African markets, apart from South Africa, where an M-Pesa-like product previously failed; and Tanzania, which already has a thriving mobile money service also called M-Pesa operated by Vodacom, Collymore said.
“I’d like to be able to talk about something before the end of the year,” he said.
M-Pesa is now available in Albania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Romania and Tanzania. According to Vodafone’s disclosure, the platform has 29.5 million active customers through a network of more than 287,400 agents as at December, 2016.
