M-Pesa officially rolls out in Ghana as part of expansion into West Africa

sQuashie

January 16, 2016 10:27 AM

The launch comes after a successful pilot period, which started in August last year, with service set to operate under the ‘Vodafone Cash’ brand.

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Vodafone Group declares the rollout of mobile money platformM-Pesa in Ghana, the 11th market where it has launched the service so far.

The launch comes after a successful pilot period, which started in August last year, with service set to operate under the ‘Vodafone Cash’ brand.

“Vodafone Cash extends the revolution of mobile money to Ghana, liberating our customers from the risks associated with carrying cash at all times.

“The strong demand for the service following the pilot launched in August shows that Ghanaians’ greatly value the freedom, peace of mind, security and convenience that M-Pesa offers,” MichaelJoseph, Vodafone’s director of Mobile Money said.

Vodafone said approximately 64 per cent of the country’s population does not have access to bank accounts, amounting to about 15 million people.

Ghanaians will be able to transfer money from their phones at home and on the move using the service.

Vodafone has in recent years launched the mobile money service in Tanzania, South Africa, Lesotho, DRC, Egypt and Mozambique where it has operations, following the success of M-Pesa in Kenya.

The M-Pesa service in Ghana is called Vodafone Cash and its launch brings to 11 the countries where the UK Company has launched its mobile cash service globally including in Romania, Albania and India.

“Ghana is the last country in Africa where Vodafone has operations and where we had not launched the M-Pesa service.” former Safaricom CEO and currently the Vodafone director of mobile money Michael Joseph said.

“We did a soft launch mid last year before having the official launch early last month. While it is still too early to talk about success rates, the reception so far has been impressive,” Joseph added.

Ghana has a population of about 27 million people, majority of who do not have access to a bank account. The West African country is currently served by six mobile phone operators – Vodafone Mobile, Expresso, Tigo, MTN, Airtel and Glo Mobile.

MTN is the market leader with about 15 million voice subscribers as of August 2015 shows data from the National Communications Authority of Ghana followed by Vodafone with 7.5 million customers.

Tigo is third with about 4.1 million customers, slightly above Airtel’s subscriber base.

“Our main competitors all have versions of mobile money services but we are confident about the quality of the M-Pesa service as has been demonstrated by its success elsewhere. The strong demand for the service following the pilot launch in August shows that Ghanaians greatly value the freedom, peace of mind, security and convenience that M-Pesa offers,” he noted.

Global M-Pesa usage increased 27 per cent to 23.4 million active customers across Vodafone Group in the year to September 30. The ongoing expansion into new markets is expected to push its usage further up.

sQuashie

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