Mobile operator Safaricom enters discussions with US tech giant Amazon to integrate its M-Pesa mobile payment service into the company’s platform. The announcement was made yesterday by Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa (pictured).

The boss of Kenya’s leading telecom operator said that the success of these exchanges will strengthen the fruitful collaboration that the two companies already have. Safaricom and Amazon are already working together on web services, with the former managing the local sales of the U.S. giant's cloud service.

Safaricom's desire to introduce M-Pesa as a payment method on Amazon is in line with its expansion strategy, which it has already initiated by signing partnership agreements with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd and Paypal Holdings Inc.

If successful, the Safaricom-Amazon partnership will help multiply revenues for M-Pesa, which saw a 2.1% decline in revenue in H1 2020 due to government-imposed free operations during the Covid-19 crisis. Growth was restored in H2 with the end of free transactions in Q4. The value of M-Pesa transactions increased by 58.2% YoY to KSh22.04 trillion ($205.5 billion). Transaction volume increased by 29.8% to KSh11.68 billion from KSH9 billion in 2019.

Muriel Edjo