Leading mobile money service M-Pesa on Tuesday announced that it had reached 50 million monthly active customers strengthening its position as the continent’s largest fintech.

M-Pesa, which was launched in Kenya more than 14 years, is currently available in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt.

This milestone comes just 18 months after Safaricom and Vodacom launched the M-Pesa Africa Joint Venture to accelerate growth of the service across the continent of Africa.

M-Pesa Africa has equally been striving to deliver digital platforms as part of its focus to be the largest fintech and digital ecosystem in Africa.

“14 years ago, we launched M-Pesa to connect our customers to each other and to different opportunities. We are delighted to celebrate this remarkable milestone with our more than 50 million customers across the continent. As an honour to this achievement, we are reiterating our commitment and deepening our focus on more innovations that will further transform the lives of our customers,” said Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, Managing Director, M-Pesa Africa.

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Safaricom and Vodafone launched M-Pesa in Kenya in 2017 as a means for customers to instantly send money to each other through their mobile phones.

For many customers, the service operated by Safaricom became their first and often only access to financial services propelling its fast growth and adoption across Kenya.

Consequently, the mobile money service has largely contributed to the growth of formal financial inclusion across the continent, which has improved by up to 55 per cent.

M-Pesa is currently a two-sided network that provides a wide variety of financial services to both businesses and individual customers.

The platform allows users to send and receive cash, make and receive business payments, pay bills, make and receive international money transfers, save and access credit, at the convenience of their mobile phones through more than 500,000 agents spread across Kenya.

In June 2021, M-Pesa began rolling out the M-Pesa Super App across all its markets.

The M-Pesa Super App introduced one of the service’s key innovations in the form of Mini-Apps enabling customers and businesses to accomplish day-to-day tasks from shopping to accessing government services without having to download different apps for each task.

Also the M-Pesa Super App provides the more than 50 million customers with a modern, intuitive and secure way to transact on their smartphones.

M-Pesa’s second facet focuses on businesses by expanding its ecosystem to deliver innovative solutions across micro businesses, SMEs and large businesses.

The solutions include an open API in use by more than 45,000 developers and 200,000 businesses, the M-Pesa for Business Super App, the Transacting Till, and Pochi La Biashara.

Collectively, more than 500,000 businesses transact more than Sh700 billion every month on M-Pesa.

Safaricom says M-Pesa is investing in new technologies and partnerships to deepen financial health amongst its clients through products that encourage savings and lending, wealth management, and insurance.

It has equally expanded its partnerships in a bid to boost remittances which empower customers to send and receive money across more than 200 countries and territories.