M-Pesa active users in Kenya hit 32 million
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By Gerro Biko
- Posted On 26-10-2022, 03:58PM
NAIROBI, Kenya - Safaricom’s M-Pesa platform's active users have hit 32 million, this is driven by the need for mobile payment platforms by Kenyans.
Safaricom Chief Executive Officer, Peter Ndegwa said.“During the reporting period (April 2021 to March 2022), our biggest innovation, M-Pesa, which celebrated 15 years also celebrated the 30 million customer mark- monthly active customers. And I dare say that since then, we’ve seen another 2 million join the franchise.”
The firm’s franchise social impact went up by 14 percent as of March 2022, to stand at KSH 275 billion.
Mr. Ndegwa opines that “The 2.5 million customers have downloaded the MySafaricom App which offers all Safaricom services in a centralized platform, for both pre-paid and post-paid customers. Kenyans are adopting the use of smartphones, with the number of its customers using the modern gadgets growing from 16.7 million to 18.5 million, between April 2021 and March 2022.”
At the same time, East Africa's largest telco firm also recorded an increase in the acquisition of its 4G-enabled smartphones.
The firm has also offered a key lifeline to subscribers holding inactive lines by allowing the customers to keep such subscriptions active for up to two years on a single airtime top-up.
The new service dubbed Daima seeks to address the challenge brought by inactive lines for customers traveling and living abroad or those away at school or on police/army training.
Mr. Ndegwa “We are yet again innovating around customers’ needs by introducing solutions such as Daima that are modeled around the lifestyles of our customers.”
Communications Authority of Kenya stipulates that a customer with a subscription who has not used a provider’s service in the past 90 days is considered inactive.
Operators are obligated to reissue inactive customer lines to new subscribers.
In the quarter ending June 2022, Safaricom had 42.5 million mobile (SIM) subscriptions, the majority of which represented prepay customers at 41.4 million.
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