The number of transactions on Safaricom's M-Pesa grew to 2,600 per second in the financial year ended March 31, compared to 2,000 the previous year.
This saw the total number of transactions for the period under review rise to 21.03 billion worth Sh35.86 trillion, almost three times Kenya's Gross Domestic Product.
According to the telco's latest annual report, the number of transactions grew from 15.75 billion in 2022 worth Sh29.5 trillion.
Kenya's GDP is estimated at Sh12 trillion, according to the 2023 Economic Survey by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.
This means M-Pesa's ticket size for the period up to March 312, 2023 rose to Sh1,343 compared to Sh1,245 same period in 2022, pointing to increasing revenue amongst customers or rising inflation.
"Velocity in the ecosystem continued to grow with the total value and volume of M-Pesa transactions growing 21.4 per cent and 33.5 per cent YoY respectively,'' the report reads.
Chargeable transactions per one-month active customer grew by 16.2 per cent during the year under review to 23.54 transactions up from 20.25 transactions in 2022.
Overall, the firm's net earnings for the year dropped for the third year in a row by 22.2 per cent to Sh52.48 billion for the year ending March 2023, due to large investments into its Ethiopian subsidiary as well as tax hikes, cuts to the mobile termination rate and foreign exchange challenges on home turf.
Profit for the year ended March 2022 stood at Sh67.496 billion.
Safaricom rolled out operations in Ethiopia in October last year and projects that the unit will break even after four years of operations.
The unit posted a net loss of Sh21.7 billion while the Kenyan segment The Kenyan unit posted Sh74.5 billion profit buoyed by strong growth in mobile data and mobile money.
Revenue from M-Pesa grew by 8.8 per cent to Sh117.2 billion, whilst income from mobile data grew by 10.7 per cent to Sh53.6 billion, the first time that revenue from mobile data has crossed the Sh50 billion mark.
Financial services, which grew marginally by 0.7 per cent YoY, were overwhelmingly driven by Fuliza, whose rates reduced by almost 50 per cent.
The value of disbursements went up by 39.6 per cent in FY23 from Sh502.6 billion to Sh701.5 billion.