Kenya’s mobile money sector continues to grow and Kenyans continuously move to embrace a cashless mode of transaction.
Latest data from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) shows that Kenyans moved 1.06 trillion shillings during the first 90 days of 2019.
During the period, Kenyans carried out 460.11 million transactions via mobile. This means Kenyans were making 3,550 mobile money transfers per minute.
In 2018, Kenyans transacted 7.85 trillion shillings in deposits and withdrawals. This means that in 2018, 91.40 percent of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP) which was at 8.59 trillion shillings was transacted via mobile phones.
Kenyans have increasingly been using mobile money platforms to send money, receive money, withdraw money from and to their bank accounts, pay for goods and services, and of late, taking loans.
During the same period, plastic card transactions stood at 23.95 million, representing 163.93 billion shillings, an increase of 38.49 percent (45.56 billion shillings).
The use of mobile money in Kenya is said to have pushed financial access by the majority of Kenyans to 83 percent. Kenya has also featured top among countries that have achieved financial inclusion for over 10 years.
Safaricom’s M-Pesa is still the market leader with 92.02 percent of the total transactions during the first three months of 2019. M-Pesa is also the market leader in terms of customers who use mobile money as well as making calls.
Equitel Money came in second followed by Airtel Money and then Telkom’s T-Kash.
In 2018, mobile money transactions averaged 14.3 million shillings per minute according to stats that were released by the Communication Authority. During that year, for every hour, 12.5 billion shillings were being deposited, withdrawn, send or be used to pay for goods and services.