Safaricom Ethiopia revealed it signed-up 1.2 million mobile money users in the first month-and-a-half of launching m-Pesa, as it outlined progress in recruiting customers to its various services since entering the market in 2022.
The operator hit the button on its mobile money service in mid-August and by the end of September had brought 11,700 merchants and 22,700 agents on board.
It noted users on the platform had made a total of 2 million transactions.
Mobile money brand m-Pesa dominates the industry in Safaricom Group’s home market of Kenya and is also available in a variety of other markets where affiliates in Vodacom and Vodafone Group operate.
It competes with Ethio Telecom equivalent Telebirr in Ethiopia, alongside other providers of digital financial services.
In June, the GSMA released its Mobile Money in Ethiopia report in which it noted a competitive mobile money sector could be a transformative for financial inclusion in the country, which was assessed by the organisation to be notably lower than neighbouring countries in East Africa.
Elsewhere in the business update, Safaricom Ethiopia reported it had signed-up 7 million mobile users from launch to end-September 2023, with its network covering 30 per cent of the population at that point.
Safaricom switched on mobile services in 11 cities in October 2022 following a one-city trial two months earlier.
Source: Mobile Worldlive