M-Pesa Currently Doing 30,000,000 Transactions Daily

M-Pesa is currently doing 30,000,000 transactions daily according to the head of M-Pesa at Safaricom Mr. Sitoyo Lopokoyit speaking during a Stakeholders Forum organized by TechnoServe.

According to Mr. Sitoyo, M-Pesa now accounts for 80 percent of all cashless transactions in Kenya. “For every 10 cashless transactions happening in Kenya, M-Pesa accounts for 8 of them,” he said.

“We are seeing situations where businesses are completely going cashless. Currently, there are businesses that are not accepting cash and this is the new shift,” said Mr. Sitoyo.

Currently, M-Pesa has more than 26.8 customers with at least 220,000 businesses having onboarded the Lipa na M-Pesa feature. At the same time, M-Pesa is said to be supporting at least 5,000,000 micro SMEs in Kenya.

“M-Pesa moved from a transaction platform to a payment platform and now heading into being a financial platform,” he added.

To capitalize on its M-Pesa customers, Safaricom is seeking approval to launch an insurance product in Kenya as it seeks to capitalize on its M-Pesa customers for uptake. At the same time, the telco is also seeking approval to launch a unit trust and a savings products, hoping to tap into its customer base across the country.

Safaricom is seeking approvals from the Capital Markets Authority (CMA), Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), and the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) for the commercial launch of these products into the Kenyan market.

Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa says the telco wants to tap into M-Pesa’s 26.7 million active customers that transact about 1.5 trillion shillings a month to grow the savings, unit trust, and insurance products.

“We are exploring the area of wealth management. We have developed a couple of products and we are seeking regulatory approval. Until the approval is given, we may not want to announce the specifics of the products,” said Mr. Ndegwa.

One of Safaricom’s products that have taken over the Kenyan market is Fuliza that has seen millions of Kenyans taking overdrafts from the telco.

In six months to September 2020, Safaricom customers took 149.4 billion shillings from Fuliza, an increase from 112.2 billion shillings a year earlier, indicating a daily borrowing of 830 million shillings per day, showing just how significant it is.