By Jevans Miyungu
The total mobile money deposits handled by telecoms three months to March grew by 4.8 per cent, from Sh176.8 billion recorded as at December last year to Sh185.4 billion. This represented a 42.4 per cent growth in the amount of deposits posted the same period last year.
CCK said the deposits growth is an indication that the demand for the mobile money transfer service attributed to its convenience; ease of access, acceptability and as an instrument of financial inclusion for the unbanked population in the country.
As at March 31, there were 18.987 million mobile money transfer subscriptions from 18.981 million recorded during the previous period. Safaricom’s mobile money transfer service M-Pesa saw its revenues grow 43 per cent to Sh16.9 billion supported by a six per cent growth in registered users to 14.9 million in the company’s financial results for the year 2011/2012.
The mobile money transfer scene has also seen Telkom Orange’s Orange Money and Essar’s YuCash angle for the lucrative business as the voice segment takes a hit.
In terms of mobile phone subscribers, the report says yuMobile registered the highest growth of 14.5 per cent, representing growth of 324,284 new subscriptions bringing its total customer base to 2.55 million users.
As at March 31, this year, the industry had 29.21 million mobile subscriptions compared to 28.08 million posted the previous period. “The tremendous growth in the new subscriptions by Essar Telecom Kenya could be attributed to increased promotional and special offers targeting the youth” says the report.
In terms of market share, Safaricom’s share of the mobile telephony market declined by 1.3 percentage points to 65.3 per cent while yu gained the largest market share of 0.8 percentage points to 8.7 per cent
