Mobile money giant, M-PESA, has now gone live in Ethiopia, three months after Safaricom Ethiopia’s Mobile Financial Services, the entity responsible for operating M-PESA in the country, was unveiled.
M-PESA, Safaricom Ethiopia's Mobile Financial Services, goes live today 3 months after receiving the Payment Instrument Issuer License from the National Bank of Ethiopia.
For more information: https://t.co/DLD0arX4ig#FurtherAheadTogether pic.twitter.com/Do4lLsh8jT— Safaricom Ethiopia (@SafaricomET) August 16, 2023
“We are excited to go live with M-PESA in Ethiopia and start providing Mobile Financial Services to our customers. M-PESA is known to be a game-changer for financial inclusion and provides services to more than 51 million customers across seven countries in Africa offering a safe and secure platform for transactions,” said Stanley Njoroge, interim CEO of Safaricom Ethiopia.
The service is accessible through the USSD code *733# as well as the M-PESA Safaricom Ethiopia smartphone app, which is compatible with both iOS and Android platforms. However, according to a Safaricom Ethiopia X account post, the app will only become available to customers in the following weeks.
In May 2023, the telecommunications company received a mobile money license in Ethiopia following the payment of investment fees totaling $150 million.
Safaricom stated that the launch follows an intensive 3-month pilot and testing period. During this phase, the company achieved technical readiness, established essential partnerships with banks, recruited, trained, and integrated M-PESA agents into the system.
M-PESA will enter into competition with Ethio Telecom’s Telebirr, which has been operational since 2021. Telebirr has garnered popularity within Ethiopia’s financial sector boasting a customer base of 34.3 million and facilitating transactions amounting to $12.3 billion.
Telebirr offers significant digital financial services such as Telebirr Sanduq and Endekise. These services have facilitated the provision of microloans accumulating to $74.4 million, catering to 2.4 million customers, and enabling over $3.6 billion in micro-savings.
In collaboration with the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, Telebirr intends to enhance its range of services, paralleling M-PESA’s strategy, by introducing loan and savings products. Its extensive network encompasses:
- 615 service centers
- 136 master agents, and
- 107,300 agents
TeleBirr parent company, Ethio Telecom, recently announced a subscriber-count of 8%, reaching a total of 72 million subscribers, which places the company as the second-largest in Africa and the 21st largest in the world.
Safaricom Ethiopia officially started operations in October 2022, more than one year after its $850 million bid for operations was accepted by the Ethiopian government in May 2021. In its own half year results announced in November 2022, the company revealed that it had already reached 1 million subscribers in just one month of operation.
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