Vodafone to offer M-PESA services in South Africa

Vodafone will deploy the hugely-successful M-PESA mobile banking service in South Africa, the operator has announced.

The M-PESA service was developed by Vodafone and has already been deployed by Safaricom in Kenya – where it has become a flagship model for m-commerce services, Vodafone in Tanzania and Roshan in Afghanistan. More than 11 million subscribers already use the M-PESA mobile money service.

The operator plans to serve the approximately 26 million people in South Africa without official bank accounts. Currently roughly 60 per cent of residents use formal bank accounts, whereas the mobile penetration rate among the adult population is more than 94 per cent.

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