Business

Safaricom, Visa open gate to global e-commerce market 

Monday, June 6th, 2022 02:24 | By
Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa, Visa Vice President and General Manager for East Africa Corine Mbiaketcha and Marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge during the launch of M-Pesa Globalpay Visa Virtual Card. Courtesy

Safaricom and Visa, global leader in digital payments, have joined forces to open the global e-commerce market to Kenya’s unbanked and underbanked population with launch of a virtual payment card.

The M-Pesa Global Pay Visa Virtual card empowers 30 million M-Pesa customers to shop online globally and to make seamless and secure payments at merchant locations throughout Visa’s global network.

Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa described the development as “moving towards co-creating”.

“We are looking to bridge the gap for our customers who would like to use M-Pesa anywhere across the world,” he told a media briefing during the launch in Nanyuki. Meant for exclusive international payment deals, the card makes economic sense by cushioning customers from incurring forex conversion costs on local online payments that are billed in Kenya shillings.

The deal is expected to further grow the total value of transactions on M-Pesa which had soared over the last year by 34 per cent to hit Sh29.5 trillion. Already, M-Pesa revenues continue to be shaped by increased income from its innovations such as integrated financial services like Fuliza and M-Shwari, which also improved by 17.8 per cent from last year.

In total, the M-Pesa platform reached Sh100 billion in revenues for the very first time over a calendar year as business payments soared by 37.2 per cent year-on-year, while earnings from Lipa Na M-Pesa rose the highest at 60.9 per cent compared to the previous year.

Global payments increased by 22.9 per cent in the period with growth in international money remittances increasing by 23 per cent. Safaricom says the deal with Visa was informed by the increasing demand for using global apps and shopping websites for entertainment, retail outlets and even when travelling abroad.

Transactions will be subject to current M-Pesa limits of Sh150,000 per transaction and Sh300,000 per day at the prevailing Forex rates.

Mobile money platforms

“I have been having a problem paying for my Gmail accounts. Whenever it is full, I normally take a whole day to delete videos and photos to create space or just create another account, but this is such a good solution to solve my challenges,” said Juma Opar, a Nairobi-based photopgrapher.

With 429,800 active Lipa Na M-Pesa merchants, Ndegwa said this represents the platform’s sign of progress, citing interoperability of mobile money platforms among merchants as a signal of progress in the sector. Safaricom is banking on the expansion of services under M-Pesa Africa targeting new markets such as Ethiopia to underpin the platform’s scope for growth as the firm continues to use innovations to co-create solutions globally.

Corine Mbiaketcha, Vice President and General Manager for East Africa at Visa said the company is committed to expanding the payments ecosystem across Africa by opening up the global marketplace for every single consumer. 

“This partnership with Safaricom is an important step in helping to achieve this,” she said. The new virtual card will soon be available across other M-Pesa markets under a partnership between M-Pesa Africa and Visa which include Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Lesotho and Ghana.

“By leveraging our vast global network and experience as well as Safaricom’s local know-how and large subscriber base, we are charting a new path for digital payments,” said Mbiaketcha

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