Vodafone, Vodacom target M-Pesa growth

JUNE 02,2014.

BUSINESSTECH.

Vodacom, and its parent company, Vodafone, have both pointed to the growth potential ofmoney transfer service, M-Pesa, in the year ahead.

Vodacom CEO, Shameel Joosub said that he expects the relaunch of the M-Pesa service in South Africa to take place within the next two months.

In reporting financial results for the year ended March 2014, Vodacom said mobile financial services continud to grow well with M-Pesa customers increasing 21.6% to 6 million.

In Tanzania M-Pesa contributed 18.8% (2013: 14.1%) to service revenue.

“M-Pesa has been launched in all our international markets and our priority has been to increase the number of registered users and to drive activity levels by widening distribution and expanding the ecosystem in each market,” Vodacom said.

Joosub said that for South Africa, M-Pesa would see an overhaul, having initially launched in 2010, not gaining as much traction as initially expected.

In November, Joosub said that M-Pesa had “a couple of hundred thousands customers” in South Africa.

The CEO said that the improved service would be better integrated into banks’ retail infrastructure, due to an improved IT platform. He added that M-Pesa would also have far more merchants on board.

Speaking on a conference call following the release of Vodafone Group’s Q4 2014 results,  CEO, Vittorio Colao, said M-Pesa would be an “important element of the strategy” going forward.

“For years we have been talking about M-Pesa and everybody used to say yes, but that’s only Kenya, it’s a kind of strange thing happening in Kenya. Now it’s active in eight or nine markets,” Colao said.

He noted that including Vodacom’s territories, M-Pesa has 17 million active customers.

“We have worldwide 200,000 active M-Pesa agents and we process 2.8 billion transactions last year. It’s becoming really meaningful in the economies where we work and clear big opportunity is India,” Colao said.

“In India we are now nationwide we have 56,000 agents. This means 65% coverage of rural areas. To give you an idea the banks in India cover 5% of the rural areas…I am very, very optimistic about the potential of M-Pesa in emerging markets,” Vodafone’s chief said.

Serpil Timuray – Regional CEO AMAP Region said: “In India it’s very early days, but we’ve already hit 1 million customers.”