Vodacom is set to relaunch mobile money service M-Pesa in the next two months, CEO Shameel Joosub told analysts today at the company's results presentation.
Although the service has been available locally since September 2010, it has failed to gain the same sort of traction as seen in other African markets, such as Tanzania, and is currently used by less than a million people in SA.
Joosub says its much-delayed relaunch is now set to happen in the next two months, as Vodacom has reworked the IT platform so that it is better integrated into banks' retail infrastructure.
He adds, on the back of the company's annual results to March, that mobile financial services are a key driver of future growth for the company. He notes there are now six million subscribers using M-Pesa's service across Vodacom's international operations, a 21.6% gain year-on-year.
M-Pesa has been launched in all Vodacom's international markets and its priority has been to increase the number of registered users and to drive activity levels by widening distribution and expanding the ecosystem in each market. It now contributes 18.8% to service revenue in Tanzania.
At its local launch, Vodacom projected M-Pesa would sign up 10 million users in the first three years, but the service was held back by regulation and the integration needed to move money from a bank account to an electronic wallet.
Developed by Vodafone and launched in 2007, M-Pesa enables unbanked customers to buy airtime (a prevalent use in SA), pay bills and withdraw, transfer and deposit money using a cellphone.
In 2012, the World Bank estimated more than half of all inhabitants in the countries in which M-Pesa was available did not have access to a traditional bank account. In August, managing executive for mobile commerce at Vodacom Herman Singh said an estimated 13 million people in SA were unbanked, under-banked or unhappily banked.
Joosub is excited by the prospects that financial services offer for growth.
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