Safaricom periodically releases a PDF of its Key Performance Statistics (latest version here), which lists the number of M-Pesa customers, M-Kesho customers, and agent outlets countrywide.  As of April 2011, for instance, Safaricom lists 14,008,319 M-Pesa customers, 718,000 M-Kesho customers, and 27,998 agent outlets.  Broken down, here are some figures we find interesting:

1. Despite launching over a year ago, only 5.1% of M-Pesa customers use M-Kesho.
2. There are approximately 500 M-Pesa customers per agent outlet.
3. As of May 2011 there are 490 M-Pesa Pay Bill Partners, or one Pay Bill Partner per ~ 28,600 M-Pesa customers.
4. According to the SchoolPay website, Lipa Karo na M-Pesa has 26 School Pay Partners, or one School Pay Partner per ~ 539,000 M-Pesa customers. 
5. Nuna na M-Pesa lists a handful of Buy Goods Partners, including Deacons, Naivas, Uchumi, and Safaricom Shops.  Assuming 24 Deacons shops, 10 Naivas outlets*, 14 Uchumi outlets, and 34 Safaricom Shops, that represents one Buy Goods Partner outlet per ~ 17,800 M-Pesa customers.     

So what does all this mean?  The figures show that Safaricom has mastered the domestic remittance and agent management businesses (the latter with the help of Top Image and super agents like PEP Intermedius), but is lagging with regard to business-to-consumer (B2C) and consumer-to-business (C2B) payments.  

Even though Safaricom M-Pesa may control over 99% of all mobile money transactions in Kenya, the above indicates there’s still significant room to grow.  With millions of consumers demanding B2C and C2B payments via M-Pesa, it will be interesting to see how Safaricom meets this demand in the coming years.   

Ben Lyon, VP of Business Development 

* The Naivas website was down at the time of writing, so this figure is an estimate.