Kenya Records Kshs.5.5 Trillion In Mobile Money Transactions In 3 Months

According to the Sector Statistical Report for Q2, 2021 by the Communication Authority, Kenyans have grown reliant on the cashless system, with a transactional value of 5.5 trillion shillings in just three months.

The report indicates that the 5.5 trillion is an improvement from the 5.05 trillion transacted in September 2021.

From October to December 2021, over half of Kenya’s Gross domestic product was transacted by mobile money, thus surpassing the 10.7 trillion shillings estimated in the latest economic survey by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).

The report shows that the business-to-business value improved to 2.15 trillion shillings from 1.96 trillion shillings in September.

Also, the value of transactions by businesses to companies grew to 900 billion shillings compared to 817 billion shillings in Q1.

At the same time, the value of money transferred to businesses by customers grew to 1.3 trillion. On the other hand, people-to-person mobile transactions crossed the 1 trillion shillings mark for the first time to close at 1.12 trillion shillings compared to 912 billion shillings transacted in Q1.

The report further revealed that mobile money transfers increased from 71 percent to 72.3 percent during the period in reference.

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Generally, M-PESA transactions amounted to 98.8 percent of the total market share, while Airtel Money and T-Kash recorded market shares of 1.1 and 0.05 percent, respectively.

The amount of money deposited on Airtel Money was 1.36 trillion compared to that of M-Pesa, which was at 1.252 trillion shillings.

Even Though Airtel emerged as the market leader in various categories, such as the amount of money deposited, Safaricom also maintained a market leader in fixed data subscriptions at 36.8 percent.

According to the data, over 65.08 million active mobile subscriptions in Q2. Safaricom registered the highest active mobile subscription by 2.23 percent to 42.8 million, up from 41.9 million. Airtel and Telkom, on the other hand, witnessed a drop of four and 0.42 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, the total number of mobile phone devices connected to mobile networks was 59.58 million, out of which 33.06 million were feature phones and 26.51 million smartphones.

It was evident that mobile users spent an average of 1.7 minutes on on-net calls and 1.0 minutes on off-net calls.