M-Pesa is planning a consumer “lifestyle” offering as it seeks to deepen clients’ use of its mobile-money application. The offer, planned within the next 12 months, will probably be launched first in Kenya and then extended to other African markets. The M-Pesa mobile-money service, founded in 2007 by Vodafone and Safaricom, is used by over 200,000 African businesses to make payments. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a big impact on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for about for about 40% of Kenya’s GDP. Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, interim CEO of M-Pesa Africa, tells The Africa Report that this could be as an opportunity to provide tools that can help SMEs to track and manage their cash inflows and payments, as well as support them in accounting, inventory and supply-chain management.
SOURCE: THE AFRICA REPORT