Safaricom and Visa sign M-Pesa partnership
Safaricom, the largest mobile operator in Kenya, has signed a partnership deal with payments giant Visa.
Visa is develop new products for the M-Pesa platform
The deal will see the pair work on the development of new products and services supporting digital payment for customers of Safaricom’s M-Pesa micro-finance and payments platform.
The partnership will cover over 24 million M-Pesa customers, more than 173,000 M-Pesa merchants from Safaricom and more than 61 million merchants on Visa’s network.
“This partnership will play an important role in delivering even more value to our customers,” says Peter Ndegwa, CEO of Safaricom.
He adds: “Cashless payments continue to grow in popularity driven by increased globalisation and digitisation further creating demand for more innovative services.”
M-Pesa is the largest payments platform on the African continent with 40 million active users. It claims to process more than one billion transactions every month.
The service allows users to deposit money into an account stored on their mobile, to send balances using PIN-secured SMS text messages to other users, including sellers of goods and services, and to redeem deposits for regular money.
The firm is currently operational in Kenya, Tanzania, Lesotho, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Mozambique and Egypt
Vodacom and Safaricom completed the acquisition of M-Pesa from Vodafone at the beginning of the month.
“Safaricom and M-PESA have already transformed millions of everyday lives throughout Africa and put Kenya on the map as a global leader in mobile money,” says Andrew Torre, president of Visa Central Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Corine Mbiaketcha, Visa vice president and general manager for Visa in East Africa, adds: “We envision that our combined efforts in enabling seamless and interoperable financial services and products will eventually drive much desired financial inclusion in our communities.”
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