The Central Bank of Kenya has given Safaricom a nod to increase the cash transfer limit on M-Pesa to Ksh.500,000.
The changes will take effect on August 15, 2023, and will provide “customers and especially small businesses with increased convenience as the share of cashless transactions continues to rise,” according to Safaricom Chief Executive Peter Ndegwa.
The half-a-million limit is per day. The existing limits of Ksh.150,000 per transaction will continue to apply.
M-PESA’s transaction limits had already been raised in March 2020, when the Central Bank of Kenya approved a doubling of transaction limits to Ksh.150,000 and a doubling of daily and account limits to Ksh.300,000.
The transaction volume of M-Pesa – one of the largest mobile money services in Africa – steadily increased from 2017 to 2023, eventually reaching 26 billion transactions in the financial year ending 31 March 2023.
M-Pesa is a mobile money service run by Vodafone and Kenyan telecommunications provider Safaricom, that provides payment and financial services, even if a customer has no access to a bank account.
Safaricom made public the total number of its M-Pesa days after it switched on its network in Ethiopia in November last year.
The users surged by two million in six months to October 2022 to 32 million.
This is a 6.6 percentage point growth from April lasy year when subscribers stood at 30 million.
“During the reporting period (April 2021 to March 2022), our biggest innovation, M-Pesa, which celebrated 15 years also celebrated 30 million customer mark- monthly active customers.
And I dare say that since then, we’ve seen another 2 million join the franchise,” said Safaricom Chief Executive Officer, Peter Ndegwa.
M-Pesa hit a Ksh.100 billion record mark in revenue in 2021, to stand out as Safaricom’s top revenue contributor 15 years after its establishment.
According to Safaricom’s 2022 financial report, M-Pesa revenue surged by 38.3 percent to Ksh.107.7 billion from Ksh.86.2 billion in 2021.
