Safaricom plans to launch financial savings and credit score merchandise in Ethiopia, hoping to spice up earnings from M-PESA, its cellular cash platform, which has struggled to achieve traction almost two years after launch.
Since its rollout in August 2023, M-PESA has but to make a significant monetary contribution to its Ethiopian operations, in line with numbers shared by the telco throughout its earnings name on Friday. The service faces stiff competitors from Ethio Telecom’s Telebirr, which had almost 51.5 million subscribers as of February 2025.
“M-PESA is evolving right into a full cellular monetary platform, beginning with funds for utilities, with plans to introduce credit score and financial savings,” mentioned Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa. Ndegwa didn’t share a timeline for the roll-out.
It’s a unique story in Kenya, the place M-PESA is a serious a part of Safaricom’s monetary providers enterprise, which now accounts for 44.2% of whole service income. Connectivity stays the highest driver at 50.8%, however M-PESA’s contribution is critical, with over 35 million clients utilizing the service.
Safaricom’s Ethiopian arm is smaller, however rising. Nevertheless, regardless of signing up 2.4 million M-PESA clients and incomes KES 8.89 billion ($68.9 million) in service income, simply KES 410 million ($3.2 million) got here from a mixture of messaging, wholesale, fastened line, and M-PESA.
Safaricom Ethiopia and its companions invested $850 million (KES 109.75 billion) for a telecom licence, then one other $150 million (KES 19.37 billion) for the M-PESA licence. The enterprise is led by Vodafamily Ethiopia Holding, which owns 61.9%: Safaricom PLC controls 55.71%, whereas Vodacom Group holds 6.19%. Sumitomo Company owns 27.2% and CDC Group holds 10.9%.
Ethiopia is opening up its monetary sector, and Safaricom is betting it will repay. The nation licenced its first two funding banks in April 2025 and launched its securities alternate two months earlier.
“Ethiopia has made progress in addressing exterior imbalances and enhancing the enterprise local weather. In March 2025, the regulator licenced the primary two funding banks following monetary sector reforms, together with the Ethiopian Securities Alternate launch in January 2025,” Ndegwa mentioned.
M-PESA in Ethiopia is usually about utility funds. If Safaricom will get financial savings and credit score off the bottom, it may shift issues.