M-PESA Processes Sh100 Billion Daily as Safaricom Eyes Deeper Public Sector Push
M-PESA, Safaricom’s flagship mobile money service, now processes roughly Sh100 billion, approximately $800 million, every single day, CEO Peter Ndegwa has revealed.
Speaking at the Connected Africa Summit in Nairobi, the CEO disclosed that the service now handles over 500 million transactions daily.
To support this unprecedented volume, he said Safaricom has deployed a next-generation core platform capable of handling 10,000 transactions per second (TPS), a significant leap from the 4,000 TPS capacity recorded just two years ago.
Beyond the headline figures, Ndegwa used his address to issue a direct call to action to African governments, urging them to reduce bureaucratic friction and deepen collaboration with private sector players to speed up digital transformation in public services. The push to embed mobile money infrastructure into government-to-citizen services, from social transfers to tax collection, has long been seen as the next frontier for platforms like M-PESA.
M-PESA currently operates in seven markets across the continent, a footprint that Safaricom has been steadily expanding as it positions the service not just as a payments tool but as a broader financial infrastructure layer for underbanked populations.
The disclosure comes as competition in Africa’s mobile money space intensifies, with rivals including MTN Mobile Money and Airtel Money scaling their own operations. However, M-PESA’s transaction volumes and the scale of its new infrastructure investment signal that Safaricom is intent on maintaining its dominant position, and on making the platform the backbone of digital public infrastructure across the region.
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