- Safaricom has expanded its money transfer service, M-PESA Global, to Ethiopia, allowing customers in M-PESA Kenya to make mobile money transfers to M-PESA Ethiopia using M-PESA International Remittance.
- The expansion aims to increase mobile money usage and penetration across Ethiopia. Moreover, in addition to Ethiopia, M-PESA customers can now send and receive money in over 190 countries.
- This comes 14 months after Safaricom launched its mobile money service, M-PESA, in Ethiopia, in August 2023, after obtaining a Payment Instrument Issuer Licence from the National Bank of Ethiopia.
In May 2023, a Safaricom-led consortium secured a licence to launch the telco’s mobile money services — M-PESA — in Ethiopia, paying $150 million to the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) to secure the licence.
M-PESA completed a three-month pilot and testing phase from May to August, ensuring technical readiness, securing significant bank partnerships, and hiring, training, and onboarding M-PESA agents. Furthermore, Safaricom became Ethiopia's first private telecoms operator after its launch in 2022.
Safaricom announced in its fiscal year-end report for March 31, 2024, that its active customer base in Ethiopia had doubled to 4.4 million. The CEO stated that the company now has a network nearly half the size of Kenya's.
“We are pleased with the commercial momentum in Ethiopia and proud that we have been able to deliver this with a Safaricom Ethiopia team that is 90% Ethiopian,” the CEO said.
Esther Waititu, Safaricom Kenya's Chief Financial Services Officer, commented on the recent M-PESA Global launch in Ethiopia, stating that the service will make cross-border transfers and bill payments in the region more accessible, efficient, and cost-effective.
Waititu added that the partnership would benefit customers who needed to send money to Ethiopia while providing a dependable and affordable option for businesses to transact.
On the other hand, Chief Financial Services Officer for Safaricom Ethiopia, Elsa Muzzolini, stated during the signing ceremony that the extension is timely, as the revised Ethiopian forex policy encourages the diaspora and business owners to embrace digital payments to send money home.
In other news, Kenyan lawmakers have resumed their push for Safaricom's separation from M-PESA. This comes after the reintroduction of the 2022 Information and Communications (Amendment) Bill, which aims to create two separate entities, allowing for more regulatory scrutiny and reducing Safaricom's market dominance.