Comparing The Numbers: Safaricom Leads In Fintech Transaction Value As MTN Tries To Catch Up With Geographical Numbers

Safaricom’s M-Pesa has been growing at a “crazy rate” even sending chills down the spines of some stakeholders with Kenyan MPs proposing that M-Pesa be detached from Safaricom so that it stands alone as a company. Many have been asking whether M-Pesa is too big to fail.

Reports have emerged indicating that South Africa’s giant telecom, MTN has overtaken Kenya’s M-Pesa platform to become the largest payment platform (Fintech) in Africa. But what do the numbers say? So far, both giants have claimed to be the largest in Africa.

As M-PESA marked 15 years since Safaricom and Vodafone launched it in March 2007, the company announced that it had hit more than 51 million customers across Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana, and Egypt. M-Pesa has a presence in 7 countries. In Kenya, the brand has 30 million active users.

MTN, on the other hand, has about 56.8 million mobile money users and has operations in 21 countries. In terms of the countries that the two brands are in, MTN beats M-Pesa by far. In terms of active users, the numbers are still conflicting because some sources quote Safaricom at 58 million.

Related Content: M-PESA Crosses 30 Million Active Customers Per Month

Both M-Pesa and MTN rely heavily on agents for their services. Kenya’s M-Pesa has about 600,000 agents both within and without Kenya while MTN has 974,000 agents. When it comes to agents, MTN beats M-Pesa but this is expected given the number of countries it is present in.

Here is another interesting bit that will make MTN’s claim hard to verify. Last week, Safaricom said that M-Pesa service processes more than “61 million transactions a day making it Africa’s largest fintech provider.” Now, MTN is claiming the same.

When it comes to Average Revenue Per User, for MTN, it stands at 1.2 US Dollars while for M-Pesa, it stands at 2.6 US Dollars. At the same time, MTN’s total Fintech Transaction value stands at 239.4 billion US Dollars while Mpesa Fintech Transaction value stands at 300 billion US Dollars.

Related Content: M-Pesa Now Has 51 Million Customers, 465,000 Businesses, 600,000 Agents

“We launched M-PESA back in 2007 in a bid to deepen financial inclusion for our customers by connecting them to useful and affordable financial services. In 15 years, we have seen population access to formal financial services grow to as high as 83 percent as we introduced additional services and reached more customers.

Going into the future, we continue to build on our purpose to transform lives by providing our customers with a wide variety of digital solutions that empower them in an increasingly digital world, ” said Peter Ndegwa, CEO – Safaricom.

When it comes to revenue, MTN Fintech Revenue comes in at 1.052 billion US Dollars while that of M-Pesa Fintech Revenue comes in at 1.3 billion US Dollars.

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With the current numbers that we have, with both M-Pesa and MTN claiming to have overtaken each other, it is hard to tell. What is clear is, MTN covers more countries than M-Pesa, has more agents but that is how far it goes in terms of beating M-Pesa.

Despite it being in 7 countries only, M-Pesa beats MTN on total Fintech Transaction Value, Average Revenue Per User, number of active users among others.