This archive report was first published on 1 October 2019.
According to data from the regulator, transactions worth Sh2.1 trillion were conducted via Kenyan mobile money services in the three months to the end of June, marking a 47% increase from Sh1.427 trillion in the same period a year earlier.
Of the transactions, 80% were conducted on M-Pesa, the platform run by Kenya's biggest mobile operator Safaricom, which is 35% owned by South Africa's Vodacom.
The data also showed that Safaricom's market share had slipped to 63.5% in the three-month period from 65.4% a year earlier, while the company had 33.1 million subscribers at the end of June, up from 29.7 million subscribers in June 2018.
India's Bharti Airtel, Safaricom's closest competitor, saw its market share increase to 24.6% during the quarter, up from 21.4%.
The number of active SIM cards in Kenya stood at 52.2 million at the end of June, up from 45.5 million a year earlier, the regulator said.
Mobile loans have become increasingly popular in Kenya, with Fuliza lending Sh6.2 billion worth of credit in one month and Sh200 million daily.
According to a survey by Financial Sector Deepening Kenya (FSD), six percent of female borrowers compared to four percent of men have taken digital loans out of curiosity, while 50 percent of women under the age of 30 are more likely to have used or been using digital credit compared to women over 30 years of age.
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