When Safaricom introduced M-PESA in Kenya in 2007, the service grew out of a very specific need: helping people send money quickly and safely across long distances. It replaced the old habit of handing cash to a bus driver headed upcountry, and in the process, pulled millions into the formal financial ecosystem.
Nearly two decades later, M-PESA has transformed the Kenyan economy and has helped raise the banked population from just 27% in 2006 to around 85% today.
Safaricom’s newest market is Ethiopia and the landscape is very different, and so does the opportunity.
Ethiopia doesn’t struggle with financial access in the same way Kenya once did. The country has close to 30 banks, supported by over 8,250 branches and ATMs that cover a population approaching 125 million people.
One of the first things travellers notice in Ethiopia is the cash culture and the inconvenience that comes with it. The highest denomination note is worth roughly KES 200. This means that daily transactions often require huge bundles of cash.
According to Safaricom Ethiopia CEO Wim Vanhelleputte, this is the gap M-PESA is designed to fill. “We are not solving the money transfer problem,” he explains. “What we are solving in Ethiopia with M-PESA is digital payments, replacing cash payments with digital payments.”
While Kenya had a well-established Safaricom subscriber base before M-PESA came along, Ethiopia is a different story. Safaricom Ethiopia launched its mobile network first and M-PESA followed just seven months later. This is a rare scenario where a telecom service and a mobile money platform matured almost simultaneously.
Unlike the early days in Kenya where services like Lipa na M-PESA began as small pilots in select supermarkets, Safaricom Ethiopia can deploy a more polished, fully-built ecosystem from day one.
“If you want to be successful with a new product, you need to solve a real customer pain point,” Wim says. “In Ethiopia, that pain point is the need to replace cash with digital payments.”
M-PESA Ethiopia now has about 10.8 million customers, and what excites the CEO is the type of usage emerging. Roughly one-third of these users already rely on digital channels. The company is also pushing to shift users from USSD to the M-PESA app.
“Using a smartphone to do a USSD transaction doesn’t make sense when you have a very good app,” Wim notes. “Once customers get used to the app, they don’t go back.”
Safaricom Ethiopia is rolling out services that took years to mature in Kenya. Features like BankTech, which integrate banking tools directly into M-PESA, are being introduced early.
Wim sums up the ambition clearly. “We are trying to do 18 years of M-PESA in 18 months. We are on a journey, and I am convinced we will make M-PESA a success story in Ethiopia.”
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Also Read: Pochi La Biashara: How to Register, Benefits and Withdrawal Limits on M-Pesa