M-PESA is making Safaricom proud across the globe. The mobile money solution has helped Kenyans sort out money related challenges effectively. To honor that, M-PESA has received two international accolades at the Emerging Payments Awards 2015 ceremony held last week in London. M-PESA won the Best P2P or Remittance Programme, and the Retail Innovation for Emerging Markets awards, adding to the growing list of accolades the solution has received since inception in 2007.
“These awards are a testament to our customer-focused approach that has seen the M-PESA continuously innovating to meet emerging customer needs. We are particularly honored to have been the only ones who won two out of the 21 Emerging Payment Awards,” said Betty Mwangi, Director for Financial Services at Safaricom.
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M-PESA has over the years received over 50 awards at international platforms and has also emerged as the most versatile mobile money solution thereby serving as a benchmark for other similar products in the country.
“What we have in M-PESA is an unrivaled and robust mobile money solution that has effectively integrated with other Financial Services system to offer users great convenience in interpersonal and business transactions.” She added.
12 countries are already using M-PESA but Kenya remains the most successful market in the entire world, with over 20 million customers and more than 80,000 agents supporting the ecosystem. There are more than 50,000 Lipa Na M-PESA tills that allow customers make payments using the revolutionary service. The awards come as Safaricom marks its 15th Anniversary, with a series of countrywide activities to reward customers over a week.
Initially, M-PESA was designed to allow microfinance-loan repayments to be made by phone, reducing the costs associated with handling cash and thus making possible lower interest rates. However, the project was later developed to become a general money-transfer scheme. Thanks to the money solution system, Kenya is now leading in Mobile Money and M-PESA won two international awards.
Besides money transfer, M-PESA has created employment. Communications Authority of Kenya released a report in September. The report found out that transactions carried out through mobile phones rose by 24.7 per cent to Sh2.37 trillion in 2014 compared to Sh1.9 trillion that was transacted through the same channel in 2013. In addition, the number of active mobile money transfer agents increased to 129,357 active agents up from 126,622 giving Safaricom the largest share in the mobile money market. Ideally, more than 100,000 Kenyans have been employed in M-PESA kiosks. I believe that’s one of the reasons why M-PESA won two international awards.
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