Vodafone launches M-Pesa Ghana in Africa expansion bid

UK telecommunications company Vodafone, which holds a 40 per cent stake in Safaricom, has launched M-Pesa services in Ghana —completing the spread of mobile money in all African countries where the British firm has a presence.

Vodafone has in recent years launched the mobile money service in Tanzania, South Africa, Lesotho, DRC, Egypt and Mozambique where it has operations, following the success of M-Pesa in Kenya.

The M-Pesa service in Ghana is called Vodafone Cash and its launch brings to 11 the countries where the UK company has launched its mobile cash service globally including in Romania, Albania and India.

“Ghana is the last country in Africa where Vodafone has operations and where we had not launched the M-Pesa service.” said former Safaricom CEO and currently the Vodafone director of mobile money Michael Joseph.

“We did a soft launch mid last year before having the official launch early last month. While it is still too early to talk about success rates, the reception so far has been impressive,” added Mr Joseph in a telephone interview.

Ghana has a population of about 27 million people, majority of who do not have access to a bank account. The West African country is currently served by six mobile phone operators – Vodafone Mobile, Expresso, Tigo, MTN, Airtel and Glo Mobile.

MTN is the market leader with about 15 million voice subscribers as of August 2015 shows data from the National Communications Authority of Ghana followed by Vodafone with 7.5 million customers.

Tigo is third with about 4.1 million customers, slightly above Airtel’s subscriber base. “Our main competitors all have versions of mobile money services but we are confident about the quality of the M-Pesa service as has been demonstrated by its success elsewhere,” said Mr Joseph.

“The strong demand for the service following the pilot launch in August shows that Ghanaians greatly value the freedom, peace of mind, security and convenience that M-Pesa offers.”

READ: M-Pesa users get access to seven African countries

Global M-Pesa usage increased 27 per cent to 23.4 million active customers across Vodafone Group in the year to September 30. The ongoing expansion into new markets is expected to push its usage further up.

Safaricom has been on an expansion push for M-Pesa across the region in the past one year, after the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) awarded it a cash remittance operating licence in 2014.

This enabled the NSE-listed firm to launch money transfer services out of the country.

Before the CBK licensing the telco was not allowed to handle outward cash transfers even to neighbouring Uganda or Tanzania and had been offering one-sided international cash remittance services moving money into Kenya through partners such as Western Union and MoneyGram.

Safaricom last year signed a cross-border deal with South Africa’s MTN that will see customers of the two firms in 19 countries send and receive money from each other.

Already the partnership has been implemented in Rwanda and Uganda and is set to be replicated in all seven East African countries before being introduced in places such as Zambia, Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire.