.@SafaricomPLC has signed up half-a-million traders who are transacting Kes773b every month on the telco’s improved M-PESA platform. - @MaudhuiHouse
Fillings by @VodafoneGroup at the US Securities Exchange shows inclusion of apps and #PochiLaBiashara has grown use by traders across seven markets. Vodacom launched M-PESA Africa joint venture with Safaricom to accelerate growth of the service across the continent 18 months ago.
At the moment, M-PESA is available in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt markets.
The upgraded platform includes an open API in use by 45K+ developers and 200K businesses, the M-PESA for Business Super App, the Transacting Till that enables businesses to go beyond receiving payments to making business payments,
...and Pochi La Biashara that enables small businesses to separate their personal and business funds.
In 2007, @SafaricomPLC and @VodafoneGroup launched M-PESA in Kenya as a way for customers to instantly send money to each other.
For many customers, the service became their first and often only access to financial services, propelling its fast growth and adoption across the country.
Today M-PESA is a two sided network that provides a wide variety of financial services to both businesses and individual customers.
Customers can send, receive money, make and receive business payments, pay bills, make and receive international money transfers, save and access credit, all from the convenience of their devices and wherever they may be in the countries served, utilising more than 500K+ agents.
In June 2021, #MPESASuperApp was launched across all its markets. It introduced one of the service’s key innovations in the form of mini apps which enable customers and businesses to accomplish day-to-day tasks...
...from shopping to accessing government services, without having to download different apps for each task.
In addition, M-PESA Super App provides the 50M+ customers with a modern, intuitive and secure way to transact on their devices. M-PESA’s second facet focuses on businesses by expanding its ecosystem to deliver innovative solutions across micro businesses, SMEs, large businesses.
Into the future, the service has been investing in new technologies and partnerships as it seeks to deepen financial health amongst its customers through products that encourage savings and lending, wealth management, and insurance.
M-PESA has equally expanded its partnerships with the aim of boosting remittances which empower customers to send and receive money across more than 200 countries and territories.
Across the seven markets, M-PESA has grown to reach 50M monthly active customers, cementing its position as Africa’s largest fintech platform. The number of active M-PESA customers has doubled in the past five years.
The milestone also comes just 18 months after Safaricom and Vodacom launched the M-PESA Africa joint venture to accelerate growth of the service across the continent.
M-PESA Africa has been delivering digital platforms as part of its focus to be the largest fintech and digital ecosystem across the continent.
M-PESA became an even more important platform for customers during the pandemic with transaction volumes increasing 44% year-on-year in the first quarter of the current financial year.
The number of transactions grew to 4.5B in the quarter with a total transaction value of Kes9.4T
@VodafoneGroup CEO Nick Read said they are still in the early stages of M-PESA’s development and will continue to invest to capture this significant opportunity building value for shareholders.
Two friends who were with a woman allegedly killed by a British soldier recounted a guard reported a fight in one of the hotel rooms on the day she disappeared in 2012. - @NationAfrica
The body of Agnes Wanjiru, 21, was discovered in Nanyuki more than two months after she had gone missing after an encounter with the soldier on March 31, 2012.
Her friends, Florence Nyaguthii and Susan Nyambura, met Wanjiru on the fateful night at the Lions Court Hotel while she was in the company of two white men.
On the night before Tom Cholmondeley died during a routine hip operation at a Nairobi hospital, a Thai girlfriend – hitherto unknown to the family – sneaked into his hospital room “to spend the evening with him”. - @johnKamau1 for @NationAfrica
Nobody else seemed to know Amyra or her arrival on that fateful Tuesday, August 16, 2016.
Tom walked into the city hospital accompanied by his girlfriend, Sally Dudmesh, who lay besides him as they waited for anaesthetist and as he argued with nurses that he did not require an epidural anaesthesia – an injection around the spinal cord during the scheduled hip surgery.
A select list of 15 vote-rich counties could hold the key to next year’s presidential contest between Deputy President William Ruto and opposition leader Raila Odinga, making them hotbeds of political campaigns in the countdown to the August 2022 polls. - @NationAfrica
An analysis of the two most recent presidential elections shows the 15 counties made all the difference between the ruling Jubilee Party’s double wins and the opposition coalition’s losses, indicating their huge bearing on next year’s polls if past voting patterns are replicated.
In 2013, Uhuru beat his main competitor to the presidency, Odinga, by a thin margin of 800K votes, and only 8,000 ballots separated the two from going into a run-off based on the electoral rules that require a wining presidential candidate to secure above 50% of total votes cast.
Tears — some of joy, some of spite and some of fear mingled with rage — rolled down the cheeks of hundreds of Malindi residents as Ronald Ngala lowered the red flag of the Sultan of Zanzibar on December 1, 1961. - @NationAfrica
This was the culmination of numerous conferences and consultations in Kenya, Zanzibar, London.
Without those negotiations, a revolt led by Mwambao activists who fronted the idea that the coastal strip was not part of Kenya would have erupted just like the 1888 Abushiri rebellion in Zanzibar.
A new study by competition authorities representing a total of 24 African countries found that KQ, as the airline is known by its international code, charges the highest average fares on domestic and international flights.
The finding shows the national carrier risks losing market share to cheaper rivals like Ethiopian Airlines and new entrants, including Uganda Airlines.