M-Pesa is Africa's largest payments platform with some 40m users in Kenya, Tanzania, and other African countries. It processes over a billion transactions every month, according to Vodacom. Only 25% of all M-Pesa customers have a smartphone, but this is growing by 10% every year.
“This is a significant milestone for Vodacom as it will accelerate our financial services aspirations in Africa," says Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub. "Our joint venture will allow Vodacom and Safaricom to drive the next generation of the M-PESA platform – an intelligent, cloud-based platform for the smartphone age. It will also help us to promote greater financial inclusion and help bridge the digital divide within the communities in which we operate.”