Vodafone, the parent company to Safaricom has completed the transfer of Mpesa, product development abs support services Vodacom and Safaricom. The move will see Safaricom and Vodacom jointly own Safaricom.
This gives Safaricom full control of the Mpesa brand at a time the company is getting its third CEO, who has an eye of expanding to other African Markets.
Speaking to the media, Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO said, “This is a significant milestone for Vodacom as it will accelerate our financial services aspirations in Africa. Our joint venture will aloe Vodacom and Safaricom to drive the next generation Mpesa platform- an intelligent, cloud-based platform for the smartphone age. It will also help us to promote greater financial inclusion and help bridge the digital divide within the communities in which we operate.”
On his part, the outgoing CEO Michael Joseph said, “For Safaricom, we are exited that the management, support and development of Mpesa has now been relocated to Kenya, where the journey to transform the world of mobile payment begun 13 years ago. This new partnership with Vodacom will allow us to consolidate our platform development, synchronize more closely our product roadmaps and improve our operational capabilities into a single, fully converted center of excellence.”
Mpesa has been Safaricom’s cash cow ranking in billions of shilling to the company and propelling the company to become East Africa’s most profitable. With over 42 million users, Mpesa is operational in more than 7 African countries with more comping onboard.
“With the rapid increase in smartphone penetration, evolution into the financial services and the potential for geographical expansion, we believe the next step in Mpesa’s African growth will be more effectively overseen by Vodacom and Safaricom,” said Vodafone’s Group CEO Nick Read.
This completes the transition the was first announced in 2019 for acquisition of Mpesa from Vodafone.
