Safaricom Lipa Na MPESA Platform Crosses Huge Milestone
by Kiruti ItimuSafaricom has today announced a huge milestone on their popular Lipa na MPESA platform which is part of MPESA.
They have announced that the number of businesses on the service has crossed the 200,000 mark which is a significant milestone.
“The mobile phone has today become the most preferred alternative to cash and its popularity only continues to grow. More than ever, an increasing number of businesses are discovering the numerous advantages of cashless payments resulting in high growth for Lipa Na M-PESA. We continue to add more features and tools with a goal of empowering our business customers to grow and better manage their businesses,” said Peter Ndegwa, CEO, Safaricom.
This is a significant milestone for the cashless service which was launched for the MPESA platform 8 years ago.
Millions of Kenyans out there use Lipa na MPESA to pay for services or goods rendered by businesses locally. The company revealed that retail leads in receiving payments, followed by hospitality then general trade.
Safaricom has also revealed that they have seen a surge on Lipa Na MPESA usage in the country this year. Thanks to COVID-19, Safaricom says that they have seen the uptake of this service especially by small businesses. Part of the measures due to COVID-19 involved waiving all merchant transaction fees on the service below KES 1000.
The company says that customers using the service has grown by over 1 million since January 2020 to more than 6 Million Today. That is a 20% surge in people using Lipa Na MPESA services during this difficult year.
This follows the launch of the MPESA Business App
Safaricom has been making strides this year to make this service much better to its millions of MPESA users. They launched the MPESA Business app a few months ago which was a way for merchants to view their performance. The company revealed that the app hasbeen downloaded more than 90,000 teams since its launch.