Safaricom on Thursday announced that its M-Pesa mobile payment platform had surpassed 30 million customers who are actively using the service each month in Kenya.

This comes days after M-Pesa commemorated its 15th anniversary after it was introduced in the country on March 6, 2007.

Kenya is the platform’s most active market accounting for more than 30 million of M-Pesa’s 51 million clients across Kenya, Tanzania, DRC, Ghana, Mozambique, Lesotho and Egypt.

“M-PESA’s success has been achieved on the back of consistent focus on the needs of our customers by ensuring that we are constantly delivering innovations that add value to their lives. We thank all our customers for getting us to the 30 million monthly active customers milestone. As the country goes digital with growing smartphone usage, we are committing to continue exploring and delivering life-changing innovations in a digital world” said Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa.

Safaricom credits the growth on the launch of M-Shwari, KCB M-Pesa and Fuliza and establishment of local and global partners including PayPal, AliExpress and Western Union.

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Ndegwa says M-Pesa has witnessed exponential growth in business usage in the past two years with businesses accepting payments on its Lipa Na M-Pesa service moving from 173,000 in April 2020 to 387,000 currently.

Safaricom and Vodacom will now pay attention to growing the payment service in other markets outside the country in an effort to bring them to the same usage level as Kenya.

The two companies announced the launch of M-Pesa Africa in April 2020 with an aim of consolidating M-Pesa’s resources, strategy and roadmap across the continent.

The firms indicated that M-Pesa Africa was investing in a common platform that would empower all markets to offer the M-Pesa’s entire range of services and products.

Safaricom has also invested in an M-Pesa Super App for customers and businesses and it is currently available in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The telcos is also eyeing partnerships with other financial service providers within and without the continent to introduce new International Money Transfer solutions.