Safaricom Group defied a host of social-economic challenges that faced the operating environment including floods, economic disruptions and the impact of foreign exchange regime reforms on Ethiopian currency to record positive growth across its product offerings.
According to Safaricom's Chief Finance Officer Dilip Pal, M-Pesa contributed 50 per cent of the firm's total service revenue which grew by 13.1 per cent to Sh179.9 billion.
The mobile money transfer segment of the business contributed Sh77.24 billion to the group's earnings, having grown 16.6 per cent.
In Kenya, M-Pesa revenue recorded a strong growth of 16.6 per cent to Sh77.22 billion driven by a 13.1 per cent growth in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) to Sh389.27.
Chargeable transactions per one-month active customers increased by 25.6 per cent to 37.37.
One-month active customers grew by 4.1 per cent to 33.46 million while M-Pesa agents rose by 2.4 per cent to 266,007.
"We have seen great performance in new products like Pochi la Biashara and merchant overdraft products as we continue to support our SMEs in our ecosystem," he said.
The number of Pochi Tills more than doubled to 869,020 while merchant overdraft (Fuliza) customers grew 72.9 per cent to 52,270.
Total M-Pesa transaction value rose 10.7 per cent to Sh 20.85 trillion while volumes grew 30.6 per cent to 17.09 billion.
M-Pesa now accounts for 43.5 per cent of service revenue.
In Ethiopia, M-Pesa revenue closed the half year at Sh24.4 million with 8.31 million registered customers.
Active M-Pesa agents stood at 3,160 while active Lipa na M-Pesa merchants increased to 6,600.
"We continue to add more use cases with volume and value transacted at 86.5 million and Sh10.94 billion respectively."
The group's voice revenue grew by 4.8 per cent to Sh40.87 billion while mobile data contributed Sh37.6 billion to the firm's earnings, having grown by 21.5 per cent.
Revenue from fixed internet rose by 13.1 per cent to hit Sh8.3 billion while SMS revenue grew by eight per cent to Sh6.3 billion.
In Kenya, mobile data revenue recorded a double-digit growth of 20.2 per cent to Sh35.6 billion driven by 13.5 per cent growth in ARPU to 263.25.
The growth has also been fuelled by an increase in customers, device penetration, provision of the right content to encourage usage, personalized offers through data and analytics and our CVM initiatives.
One-month active mobile data customers grew by 10.5 per cent to 28.83 million.
Data usage per chargeable subscriber rose by 9.8 per cent to 4.12GBs while distinct bundle users went up by 10.2 per cent.
According to the financial report, overall group customers grew by 7.8 per cent year-on-year to 52.01 million while one-month active customers grew by 10.8 per cent to 39.75 million.
This saw Safaricom continue commanding the country's mobile network market share at Safaricom 65.4 per cent as of June 2024.
