Vodacom Financial Services business continues to attract more customers as it experienced strong growth for the period to end 31 December 2020.
Shameel Joosub, Vodacom’s CEO, informed investors that the Financial Services business remains a strong performer having increased revenue by 24.3%, as the business continues to scale.
“Our partnership with Alipay will add new dimensions to our Financial Services’ proposition and in particular, VodaPay, which will become our single lifestyle super app.”
Vodacom plans to create a ‘super app’ in partnership with digital payment provider Alipay, part of China’s Alibaba group, to allow consumers in South Africa to shop online, pay bills and send money to family. The app will link merchants, big and small suppliers, and consumers.
Vodacom also reported that Financial Services’ revenue was up 24.3% to R619 million in the quarter to end 31 December 2020, while customers increased 23.8% to 13.1 million.
The Vodafone-owned company said revenue growth underpinned by Airtime Advance product, where it advanced R3.1 billion in airtime, increasing by 27.7%.
The number of Airtime Advance customers increased by 26.5% to 10.7 million, Vodacom said.
In the insurance space, Vodacom announced that policies increased by 11.2% to 2.0 million.
“In partnership with Alipay, we continue to develop our single lifestyle app, VodaPay, which will further promote financial inclusion for our consumers and merchants.”
M-Pesa revenue for International business was up 10.1% to R1.2 billion in the quarter, with normalised revenue growth improving to 7.8%.
The third quarter normalised growth rate improvement relative to the six months ended September 2020 was supported by a reinstatement of peer-to-peer (P2P) fees in Mozambique during October 2020, and ongoing platform adoption as customers and governments embraced digital ways of working.
Further, the DRC reinstated P2P payments in January 2021, supporting the growth outlook for International M-Pesa revenue. In the quarter, M-Pesa customers across our International operations increased 7.7% to 16.0 million, representing 46.9% of our customer base. Monthly M-Pesa transactions, including Safaricom, was US$24.2 billion, up 57.8%
