The move comes out of Safaricom’s global expansion efforts to recover from its first profit decline in 10 years, according to the report. Sales from the service declined in the year through March, after Kenya’s central bank asked Safaricom to forgo some charges for nine months to discourage cash payments during the Covid-19 pandemic. That contributed to the carrier’s first decline in annual profit since 2011. “M-Pesa accounts for about a third of Safaricom’s revenue, and East Africa’s largest company sees the financial-technology product as key to future growth,” the report stated. “The carrier already has partnerships with a unit of China’s Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. and PayPal Holdings Inc.” Safaricom is easily the biggest telecom company in Kenya and the surrounding area, Bloomberg reported, calling M-Pesa “the jewel in its crown” thanks to the country’s prevalent use of smartphones in lieu of traditional banking.
