M-PESA revenue grows by 12.6pc to hit 84.4bn in FY19/20 - Capital Business
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Kenya

M-PESA revenue grows by 12.6pc to hit 84.4bn in FY19/20

NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 30 – The value of M-PESA transactions increased 18.4 percent in the 2019/2020 financial year, as its revenue grew 12.6 percent to Sh84.4Bn with 43.4 percent of the growth attributed to new business channels primarily savings and lending products: M-Shwari, Fuliza and KCB M-PESA.

A rising albeit small star in the new business channels is international money transfers which grew 50.7 percent year on year under the M-PESA Global initiative currently with 744, 000 customers and 25 global partners in 167 countries.

During the period under review, 30-day active M-PESA customers grew 10.0 percent year to year to 24.9Mn while 30-day M-PESA average revenue per user was up 1.6 percent year on year to Sh294.7 million.

Penetration of active M-PESA users has steadily been increasing and is currently at 87.0 percent of Safaricom’s 30-day active customers compared to 86.6 percent in the 2019 financial year.

M-PESA now accounts for 33.6 percent of service revenue compared to 31.3 percent in FY19.

“Revenue growth for the year was driven by a strong performance on M-Pesa and a strong performance on mobile data,” Safaricom chief financial officer Sateesh Kamath said.

On the other end, growth in mobile data was greatly witnessed during the second half of the year after Safaricom introduced the non-expiry bundle packages which contributed 40 percent of the mobile data revenue.

However, Safaricom, is unable to offer earnings guidance for the 2020/21 financial year because of the coronavirus pandemic

“We are operating in unpredictable times,” Peter Ndegwa, the firm’s new chief executive, told investors on an online briefing Wednesday.

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Currently, Safaricom’s contribution towards the COVID 19 Emergency Response Fund is valued at Sh6.5 billion.

The board chair appealed to the government to come up with innovative ways that will help Business recover from Covid 19 shocks.

“The national and county government need to find innovative ways to balance revenue maximisation and at the same time boost business recovery and growth,” Safaricom board chairman Nicholas Ng’ang’a said.

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