M-Pesa Processes 6 Billion Transaction Across the World in 2016

Safaricom’s Mobile money service M-Pesa processed about 6 billion transactions globally in 2016 with 29.5 million active customers across 10 markets.

According to a statement from Vodafone, the transactions peaked in December at 529 transactions every second. Vodafone has marked its10th anniversary of the launch of the money transfer service in Kenya.

The statement further revealed that as of the end of December 2016, M-Pesa had almost 29.5 million active customers through a network of more than 287,400 agents in its 10 markets. Kenya remains to lead as the largest market for the service, accounting for almost 60 percent of the global M-Pesa user base.

“M-Pesa 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,” said Vodafone Group managing director of M-Pesa Michael Joseph.

The M-Pesa journey started off back in 2007, putting Kenya on the world map in terms of innovations. Since then, M-PESA has been sailing through the economic turmoil in Kenya and appears to be growing bigger with each coming day. With a range of services ranging from deposits, withdrawals, payment of bills as well as microcredit provisions, M-PESA stands out as a unique product and the greatest invention in the transaction world so far.

It is estimated that M-PESA’s contribution to the Kenyan economy stands at over 40 percent of the GDP while M-PESA’s average monthly value of person to person transfer is 106 billion shillings; Person to Business is 23.5 billion shillings and Business to Person is 27.8 billion shillings per month. M-shwari, a product within M-PESA, provides avenues for financial inclusion so that Kenyans access loans. Over 11.5 million customers are on M-Shwari, of which 5.8 million are active. There are over 199,000 Lipa Na M-PESA merchants.

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