{"id":954436,"date":"2026-11-06T06:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T06:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/954436\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T06:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T06:54:16","slug":"high-m-pesa-transactions-push-safaricoms-half-year-profits-to-sh58-2-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/954436\/","title":{"rendered":"High M-Pesa transactions push Safaricom\u2019s half-year profits to Sh58.2 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Safaricom Group Chief Finance and Innovations Officer Dilip Pal, Group CEO Peter Ndegwa and Safaricom Ethiopia CEO Wim Vanhelleputte\/HANDOUT<\/p>\n

Safaricom\u2019s money transfer upgraded infrastructure can now support up to 6,000 transactions per second as the telco tightens its grip on Kenya\u2019s digital payment market.<\/p>\n

This saw M-Pesa cross the Sh100 billion revenue mark for the first time in six months as the platform expands beyond money transfers into merchant payments, credit, savings and investments.<\/p>\n

The mobile money platform generated Sh100.1 billion in revenue in the six months to September 2026, representing 13.6 per cent growth from Sh88.1 billion in a similar period last year.<\/p>\n

The milestone came as Safaricom Group\u2019s net income increased 35.9 per cent to Sh58.2 billion, underlining the growing importance of financial technology to the telecommunications giant\u2019s profitability.<\/p>\n

Speaking during the release of the half-year results on Thursday, Group chief executive Peter Ndegwa said the performance demonstrated the company’s commitment to its purpose of making life better through technology and financial inclusion.<\/p>\n

The platform processed 27.4 billion transactions during the reporting period, a 25.2 per cent increase, with their combined value rising 16.6 per cent to Sh23.6 trillion.<\/p>\n

This translates to an average of approximately 150 million transactions daily, demonstrating the scale of M-Pesa’s role in facilitating economic activity.<\/p>\n

The increased processing capacity is part of Safaricom’s Fintech 2.0 upgrade, which has transformed M-Pesa from a mobile money transfer service into a broader financial infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Ndegwa said the upgraded platform has 99.999 per cent availability and can scale beyond 12,000 transactions per second, providing room for further growth in digital payments and financial services.<\/p>\n

Consumer payments remained the largest revenue contributor, generating Sh40.8 billion, up 14 per cent, while business payments increased 14.7 per cent to Sh31 billion.<\/p>\n

Financial services recorded the strongest growth, with revenue surging 55.3 per cent to Sh7.1 billion. Global payments revenue also rose 26.6 per cent to Sh2.8 billion.<\/p>\n

Business payments, global payments and financial services accounted for 98.9 per cent of incremental transaction volumes, pointing to the expanding commercial utility of the platform.<\/p>\n

Chargeable transactions increased 48.2 per cent to 12.9 billion, representing 47 per cent of total transactions, compared with 39.7 per cent a year earlier.<\/p>\n

The financial report shows that 53 per cent of all M-Pesa transactions remained free or zero-rated.<\/p>\n

Approximately 81 per cent of Lipa na M-Pesa and Pochi la Biashara merchant transactions and 63 per cent of consumer transactions attracted no charges during the period.<\/p>\n

The strong performance also lifted investor sentiment at the Nairobi Securities Exchange, where Safaricom shares gained nearly five per cent during Thursday’s trading following the results announcement.<\/p>\n

The stock traded at Sh35.90, up Sh1.70 from its previous closing price of Sh34.20, having touched an intraday high of Sh36. This represented an intraday gain of about 5.3 per cent at the peak.<\/p>\n

The results showed that group service revenue increased 13.1 per cent to Sh226.1 billion, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 27.5 per cent to Sh129.2 billion.<\/p>\n

Operating profit increased 39.8 per cent to Sh91.1 billion, supported by the Kenyan business and improving performance in Ethiopia.<\/p>\n

In Kenya, service revenue grew 11.3 per cent to Sh216 billion, with earnings before interest and tax crossing the Sh100 billion mark for the first time in a half-year reporting period, reaching Sh101.8 billion.<\/p>\n

Safaricom Ethiopia’s service revenue surged 71.6 per cent to Sh10.6 billion, while its EBITDA loss narrowed 96.5 per cent to Sh434.4 million. The subsidiary had 15.4 million three-month active customers, up 38.4 per cent.<\/p>\n

The improvement reduces the financial burden of the Ethiopian expansion, with management targeting EBITDA break-even by the end of the current financial year.<\/p>\n

The firm did not declare a new interim dividend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Safaricom Group Chief Finance and Innovations Officer Dilip Pal, Group CEO Peter Ndegwa and Safaricom Ethiopia CEO Wim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[64,63,240577,203,4031,35470,34536,271162,223420,105,34537,240576,34535],"class_list":["post-954436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-kenya-news","tag-mobile","tag-star","tag-star-news","tag-star-news-kenya","tag-star-newspaper","tag-star-newspaper-kenya","tag-technology","tag-the-star","tag-the-star-kenya","tag-the-star-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}