M-Pesa was the biggest contributor to the firm's service revenue, officially crossing the 40 per cent mark.
The mobile money arm of the listed telco's total earnings rose to Sh139.9 billion, representing 42 per cent of Safaricom's total service revenue. This is an increase from 19.36 per cent the previous year.
The M-Pesa ecosystem continued to expand, with the total value and volume of transactions growing by 9.6 per cent and 33.9 per cent year on year, reaching Sh40.2 trillion and 28.3 billion transactions, respectively.
Chargeable transactions per one-month active customer now stand at 31.5 up from 23.5 transactions last year, a growth of 33.9 per cent.
An increase in usage drove the 16.1 per cent year-on-year growth to drive the 19.4 per cent year-on-year growth in revenue.
Both Lipa Na M-Pesa (merchant payments) and Pochi la Biashara (informal business wallets), which make up 21 per cent of the business payments, contributed 11 per cent of the growth in M-PESA revenues in the period under review.
Lipa na M-Pesa revenues grew by 38.2 per cent to Sh7.3 billion driven by growth in usage, with volumes more than doubling in the period.
Pochi La Biashara made significant progress with the revenues more than tripling to Sh800 million and the Pochi tills more than doubling to 633,000, similar levels to the merchant tills.
Global payments represent a smaller portion of M-Pesa revenue at 2.5 per cent and grew 20 per cent year on year.
"We expanded our international payment corridors to over 200 markets,'' Pal said.
