Kenyans have borrowed a whooping Sh45 billion from Safaricom's Fuliza credit facility since January, Safaricom said on Friday.
While announcing the results on Friday for the year ending March 31, CEO Bob Collymore said Fuliza has had an incredible uptake since its launch three months ago.
Collymore said the service had attracted 8.8 million subscribers by March 31.
This means with Sh45 billion having been borrowed by then, each customer borrowed an average of Sh5113 over the three month period.
Collymore said in the first month alone, Sh6.2 billion was borrowed by 4.4 million customers who had opted into the service translating to an average of Sh1,400 per person.
He said in total, Sh29 billion completed transactions were made over the period under review.
Collymore said Safaricom's customer base now stands at 31.8 million out of over 49 million mobile subscribers in Kenya.
Mpesa subscribers have grown by 19.2 per cent to 22.6 million from 16.6 million in 2016.
Collymore, however, said there has been a slow down in the uptake of mobile data where marginal growth of 6.4 per cent was experienced during the period under review compared to 24 percentage growth recorded in 2018.
Overall, Safaricom's net income grew by 14.7 per cent to Sh63.40 billion while the service revenue grew by 7 per cent to Sh240.30 billion.
