With a collaboration with e-commerce behemoth Amazon, Safaricom’s M-Pesa, a mobile money service in Kenya, is gaining ground in the remittance sector.
As of September 2021, the service, which debuted in 2007, had amassed more than 50 million active monthly users and was a significant provider of financial services in the East African area.
With more than 30 million users, M-Pesa is widely used in Kenya. In addition to Kenya, it also runs in other African nations including Tanzania, Lesotho, Ghana, Mozambique, Egypt, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Every year, its users transact more than $314 billion worth of business, with M-Pesa accounting for 60% of formal remittances in Kenya and 20% in Tanzania.
The collaboration between M-Pesa and Amazon is not the first time the two businesses have discussed it. According to Bloomberg, the two were talking about adding M-Pesa as a payment option on Amazon in 2021. This breakthrough is anticipated to accelerate M-development Pesa’s and strengthen its position as the top supplier of mobile banking services in Africa.
Remittance market growth in low- and middle-income nations increased by 5%, reaching $626 billion in 2022, according to World Bank statistics. M-Pesa sees this as a chance to expand its service offerings and increase its market share.
Established rivals like Western Union and MoneyGram compete with M-Pesa, but experts believe that a proposed split from parent firm Safaricom might draw in more investors and raise M-worth. Pesa’s An effective capital allocation would be made possible by a split, and shareholders would benefit.