The New M-PESA App, Beyond The Daily Transaction

Kenya has led other 20 African countries as the leader in financial inclusion. In 2020, the national access to financial inclusion in Kenya hit 82.9 percent, an improvement from 26.7 percent in a decade according to the Kenya Economic Report 2020.

According to that report, 17 percent of the Kenyan population which is still excluded from access to formal financial services are mainly in rural areas. The dynamics are, however, changing as more Kenyans become included financially.

Kenya’s success in financial inclusion has been attributed to an evolution in mobile money; M-PESA to be specific. M-PESA has more than 28 million customers on board who transact daily. For instance, for the financial year 2020, Total M-PESA transaction value grew 58.2 percent YoY to 22.04 trillion shillings while the volume of transactions grew 29.8 percent YoY to 11.68 billion shillings.

Safaricom, through M-PESA, has been able to shift the transaction space in Kenya, giving Kenyans a new way to send, receive money, and pay for products and services. Even mainstream banking attributes a large part of its success on mobile banking, with M-PESA taking the lion’s share.

The evolving M-PESA

M-PESA has been evolving in the past 10 years. From just sending and receiving the money to being able to pay for goods and services through Lipa Na M-Pesa, and to now getting loans through M-Shwari and Fuliza. The giant telecommunications company, Safaricom PLC, has ensured that M-Pesa keeps on changing for the benefit of customers.

One of the greatest developments in M-Pesa was the development of mySafaricom App that has over the years, enabled Kenyans to send, receive, pay for goods and services, buy credit, data bundles among other services via a mobile app.

And now there is a new development that is taking M-Pesa to a whole new level; the development of the new M-Pesa App. Unlike the mySafaricom App, the new M-Pesa App focuses only on Safaricom’s mobile banking platform; M-Pesa.

This App, which has already started sweeping across the country with more than 900,000 downloads, offers an amazingly detailed and interactive solution that simplifies the use of the M-PESA experience. It not only makes the transaction experience easy but fun and enjoyable too.

For those who have already installed the app, they have acknowledged the fact that the App is able and capable of converging several services including purchasing of data, managing bills, M-PESA global (sending and receiving money from outside the country), saving and growing funds, knowing the amount spend over a while, among others.

M-PESA app comes out a great design work of masterpiece that comes with variables that are divided into five:

• Home
• Transact
• Discover
• My Spend
• Grow

Home

This is the “home page”. The first thing to see as one visits the M-Pesa App.

One the “Home” category, one can view their M-PESA balance, see a summary of their spending, access a scrollable list of their statements, and also perform the most popular M- PESA transactions such as sending money, Lipa Na M-PESA, withdrawal, and buy airtime.

Transact 

As the category suggests, here is where one gets to transact. Under this category, one will see all the M-PESA products and services available to them including those that aren’t on the home screen such as M-PESA Global and Fuliza.

Discover

Now, this is an interesting category. M-Pesa App has devolved services. Within this app, they are other mini-apps that a customers can access and use for various products and services while paying from within the app. From the discover tab, customers will be able to access all the approved 3rd party mini-apps.

My Spend

This category is like your personal accountant. It helps you put in check your spending habits by detailing how and where you spend your cash. You will be able to view your monthly spending on M-PESA as a total as well as broken down per spending categories i.e. food and beverage, transport among others.

Grow

This is the best of all the categories. It helps the customer to be able to access all products that assist in investing their money as well as providing credit which for now will only include M-Shwari and KCB M-PESA. This the best category for SMEs.

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If you are one who accidentally sends money to a “wrong number”, the new M-Pesa App is what you should have. The App incorporates Safaricom’s Hakikisha service where one is prompted to confirm the name and number before keying in their M-PESA PIN for the transaction to go through.

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To have a feel of this amazing M-Pesa App, there is only one way; download it. Get early access to the app today on Playstore for Android users and Apple’s App Store for iPhone users. What is more, you will receive 500MBs worth of data bundles upon downloading and signing up.

Keep it here for another piece that will break down the app, laying it bare how it works in every task.

To download this powerful app, that will redefine your personal finance and manage your business transactions, download the app by clicking here; M-PESA App, click here.