The amount of payments via mobile phones touched a new high in February, underlining the popularity of mobile money payments, fresh data from the Central Bank of Kenya shows.
The data indicates cash paid through mobile phones reached a daily average of Ksh7.43 billion, a new record from last December’s Ksh7.28 billion.
A total of Ksh208.13 billion passed through mobile payment platforms dominated Safaricom’s M-Pesa in February, 1.14% lower than January’s Ksh210.54 billion. January’s average daily transactions were nonetheless higher than February’s because the month of January has three more days.
Rising penetration of mobile phones was captured at 82.6% or 33.6 million subscribers by last December. The February average daily mobile payments were 20.42% or Ksh1.26 billion more than 12 months earlier when they averaged Ksh6.17 billion.
The six-company industry is dominated by Safaricom’s M-pesa with over 85 per cent market share. Other players include Airtel Money, Telkom Kenya’s Orange Money, Equity Group-owned Finserve’s Equitel, Zioncell Kenya’s Mokibash and Tangaza Money’s mobile pay.
On the other hand, average daily payments through plastic cards-controlled by 44 commercial banks-in February average Ksh3.68 billion or Ksh103 billion in 28 days, slightly less than half the volumes through mobile devices.
There was however a slight improvement month –on-month in card payments compared with January’s daily average of Ksh3.23 billion or Ksh100.2 billion in 31days. Mobile phone-based payments are set to continue ruling the payment systems with Safaricom in final stage of upgrading M-pesa system to enable real time payment of all bills.
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