M-Pesa VS Telebirr : The battle for customers as Safaricom Ethiopia granted mobile money license

NAIROBI, (GO) - Kenya has been at the forefront of Africa’s mobile money revolution ever since Safaricom launched the mobile money platform M-Pesa.

While most countries in the African continent have embraced mobile money platform services and even gone further to create their mobile money platforms, Ethiopia still lags behind the rest of African countries when it comes to this new revolution.

But this might soon change with the granting of the license to Safaricom Telecommunication Ethiopia (STE) by Abiy Ahmed’s administration. This comes after a deal was reached to grant Safaricom a mobile money services license in Addis Ababa on Thursday evening, hours after the national launch of Safaricom Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s Finance Minister Ahmed Shide announce during the national launch of STE. “A deal has been reached between the government of Ethiopia and Safaricom to grant a license of mobile money service to Safaricom.”

It meant that Safaricom’s M-Pesa would be planning to tap into the 115 million Ethiopian population while relying on Kenya’s strong foundation to penetrate a market that, up to August this year, was entirely controlled by the government.

This now creates healthy competition with Kenya’s number mobile money platform to battle it out with state-owned Ethio Telecom service, which has the  ‘Telebirr.’

Telebirr mobile money platform was launched in 2021 with more than 21 million subscribers.

STE, which officially switched on its network on Thursday in a ceremony attended by Kenya’s head of state, Dr. William Ruto, and Ethiopia premier Abiy Ahmed had already signed about 200,000 subscribers in three regions of Dire Dawa City, Eastern Harari, and Oromia Region.

Safaricom Ethiopia’s 2G, 3G, and 4G networks will be available in 11 cities.

As of now, Safaricom connects more than 51 million customers to financial services through its M-Pesa platform across seven countries in Africa.

Currently, Safaricom-Kenya is the majority shareholder in the Ethiopian consortium, and other shareholders are UK’s Vodafone, South Africa’s Vodacom, Sumitomo Corporation, and British International Investment. STE is the first private company to be awarded a telco license to operate in the country.

GAROWE ONLINE