Vodacom today published its financial results for the year to end-March and disclosed solid performance from its mobile money platforms.
“Our mobile money platforms, including Safaricom, processed $525.6 billion of transaction value in the year, up 16.6%, representing leadership in the African FinTech space,” Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO, disclosed on Monday.
This makes Vodacom’s mobile money platform the biggest on the African continent, ahead of MTN and Airtel Africa.
The Vodafone-owned company disclosed that normalised M-Pesa revenue in its International business grew 22.8%, with growth across the portfolio of countries.
M-Pesa revenue was supported by strong growth in our ‘beyond core’ services such as payments, savings, loans and merchant offerings, said Vodacom.
Vodacom’s M-Pesa core services comprise peer-to-peer, cash in and cash out.
“Beyond core services contribution reached 46.4% of M-Pesa revenue, consistent with our strategy to expand the ecosystem. In addition to strong trends in the consumer space, we continue to scale our merchant services as part of a dual-sided strategy,” said Joosub.
“Our merchant base in South Africa extended to over 11 200, while across our International business, we grew M-Pesa merchants 32.3% to 705 000.
“For Safaricom, business payments continue to support M-Pesa growth with merchants reaching 3.2 million, up 71.9%.
“We also see an exciting opportunity for merchant services in Egypt, and expect to scale new merchant capabilities and other financial services by leveraging the Group’s product roadmap.”
Meanwhile, Vodacom’s service revenue for its International business rose 9.9% (14.4%) to R33.7 billion, supported by excellent M-Pesa and data growth.
