Safaricom, one of the biggest phone companies in Africa, has stated that M-Pesa mobile money services are now available in Ethiopia.
This change comes after the company got a license to do business from the National Bank of Ethiopia in May.
All Safaricom Ethiopia customers are now able to use M-Pesa by dialing *733# on their phone or by downloading the mobile app. At the moment, the app is only for Android users, and it can be used in five languages. Plans are in the works to put out an iOS version in the next few weeks.
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In a press release, Safaricom said it was excited about the idea of using M-Pesa to provide important financial services to the Ethiopian market. Since it started in 2007, M-Pesa has grown to become one of the biggest mobile money companies. This is because its main goal is to help people get access to digital money. It lets people pay their bills, give and receive money inside and outside of the country, buy data, and do many other things.
It’s no surprise that it’s the most famous thing in Kenya, where it’s made. Even though Airtel and T-Kash provide comparable services in Kenya, Safaricom owns the majority of the market, which is not the case for Airtel. Safaricom wants to be as dominant in Ethiopia as it is in Kenya. This market is interesting because it has a big economy and the second-largest number of young people in Africa.
M-Pesa is known to be a game-changer for financial inclusion and delivers services to more than 51 million clients across seven countries in Africa, delivering a safe and secure platform for transactions, said Safaricom Ethiopia acting CEO Stanley Njoroge. His organization would increase service delivery to improve the client experience, he added.
He said M-PESA will boost digital inclusion and innovation in the 2025 Digital Payments Strategy. The National Bank of Ethiopia announced its National Digital Payments Strategy two years ago. The goal is financial industry digitization and economic prosperity.
Interim M-Pesa General Manager Paul Kavavu discussed approaching new markets. M-Pesa is “Africa’s most successful mobile money service and the region’s largest fintech platform for both the banked and unbanked.” He said the team hoped to repeat Kenya’s win. He stated that the platform would get more features to attract users.
M-Pesa faces a tough test in Ethiopia
When Safaricom said last week that it would shut down its sites in the Amhara region, it said again that the move would not affect the start of M-Pesa. It did not lie.
Now that the service is up and running, many people think Safaricom will be able to use it to make up for the losses it suffered earlier this year. It made a loss of Sh22.1 billion because of the high costs of operations it had to pay when it started doing business in Ethiopia last year.
Even though M-Pesa was a big hit in Kenya, it is important to note that Ethiopia already has a large player. For more information, the government-backed mobile money service Telebirr said last month that it had 34 million users.
Safaricom’s biggest task will be to compete with and, if possible, beat Tellbirr. Mobile money services are very popular in East Africa, which already opens up a lot of possibilities. How M-Pesa makes use of this fact remains to be seen.