Safaricom‘s mobile money service M-Pesa has formally begun operations in Ethiopia, three months after the telecom secured a license from the National Bank of Ethiopia. M-Pesa Ethiopia Safaricom
Safaricom Ethiopia reported that M-Pesa underwent a three-month pilot and testing phase where technical preparedness was created, vital connections with local banks were formed, and a network of M-Pesa agents was recruited, trained, and onboarded.
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.
Stanley Njoroge, Interim CEO Safaricom Ethiopia
The service can be accessed via USSD code *733# or the M-PESA Safaricom Ethiopia smartphone app, which is accessible on both iOS and Android. However, the app won’t be available to users until the next few weeks, according to a post on Safaricom Ethiopia’s X account.
Users of M-Pesa in Ethiopia now have access to a variety of financial services, including peer-to-peer money transactions inside the nation and receiving money from both domestic and foreign sources. Users can also carry out activities including airtime purchases, merchant payments, and financial transfers between their M-Pesa accounts and conventional bank accounts.
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M-Pesa is Africa’s most successful mobile money service and the region’s largest fintech platform both for the banked and unbanked due to its safety and convenience. It also provides financial services to millions of people who have mobile phones, but do not have bank accounts, or only have limited access to banking services.
In Kenya, it has enabled the growth of financial inclusion that over 90% of the adult population has access to mobile banking. We look forward to replicating this success in Ethiopia and excited to go live with the services. In the coming months we will continue to add more functions and work with all Ethiopians to jointly realize the transformative power of M-PESA.
Paul Kavavu, Interim General Manager of Safaricom M-PESA Mobile Financial Services PLC
M-Pesa was introduced by Safaricom to Kenya in 2007. The service, which is also provided in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Tanzania, has developed into the business’s major revenue generator.
The local giant, Ethio Telecom, presents M-Pesa with fierce competition. For its mobile money service, Telebirr, Ethio Telecom had already attracted more than 34 million subscribers by July of this year.
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