More than a third of the money sent through mobile phones between October and December last year went into paying for goods and services, fresh official data shows.
Statistics by Communications Authority of Kenya indicate Sh102.46 billion – 35.25 per cent of the Sh290.61 billion worth of 122.34 million mobile money transfers – was through commerce platforms. That underscores the revolution of the industry which had 54.35 million subscribers in December.
Safaricom’s M-Pesa accounted for 91.88 per cent of the mobile commerce transactions valued at Sh94.14 billion, the CA quarterly industry report states.
Airtel came a distant second with Sh4.29 billion, 4.19 per cent of the total mobile commerce cash, followed closely by Equity Group’s Equitel with Sh3.97 billion – about 3.87 per cent share.
Mobikash, which like Equitel runs on Airtel infrastracture as mobile virtual network operator licence, processed transactions valued at Sh47.87 million, beating Telkom Kenya’s Orange Money’s Sh12.77 million in mobile commerce. The regulator did not, however, publish the value of transactions through Tangaza.
“The volume of transactions (deposits and withdrawals) on this platform was registered at 122.3 million with Sh290.6 billion transferred among users during the period,” the CA said in the report. “Mobile commerce recorded 54.3 million transactions with Sh102.4 billion used to pay for goods and services.”
The data shows subscriptions to mobile money transfer services reached 26.75 million, a drop from 28.78 million. Users of the dominant M-Pesa declined to 19.19 million in December from 22.13 million three months earlier. M-Pesa, nonetheless, processed transactions valued at Sh267.07 billion in the three months to December – about 91.90 per cent of the total Sh290.61 billion transactions. Subscriptions to Airtel Money and Equitel, however, grew quarter-on-quarter in December to 3.69 million from 3.11 million and 1.41 million from 1.09 million.