Vodafone’s M-Pesa surpasses 25m active users

Vodafone has announced that its M-Pesa mobile money service now has more than 25 million active customers.

Across the M-Pesa footprint in Africa, Asia and Europe, active M-Pesa customers increased by 27.1% to 25.4 million for the 12 months ending in March.

Vodafone offers M-Pesa in 11 countries, having most recently launched in Albania and Ghana. The service debuted in 2007 in Kenya and Tanzania.

M-Pesa is also available in India, South Africa, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Lethoso, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Romania.

In India, Vodafone recently launched an M-Pesa smartphone app to allow customers to pay for goods on Ebay, as well as taxi fares and train tickets on India’s national railways.

Over the past 12 months Vodafone has entered a series of deals with partners to allow for cross-border and cross-service transactions using M-Pesa.

These include global agreements with the international money transfer hubs TransferTo and MFS, as well as an arrangement to allow direct-money transfer between M-Pesa and users of MTN Mobile Money in seven East African countries.

“I am delighted and proud that M-Pesa has reached the 25 million active customers milestone,” Vodafone group director of mobile money Michael Joseph said.

“M-Pesa continues to expand, evolving beyond traditional money transfers to encompass savings and loans, payment of salaries and benefits, settlement of utility bills and school fees and to enable vital health and agricultural solutions.”