Johannesburg - Vodacom, the mobile-phone operator with the most South African subscribers, plans to almost double the number of customers using the M-Pesa mobile-banking service outside its domestic market in three years.
The company wants about 11 million M-Pesa subscribers outside South Africa by 2017 compared with 6 million now, Romeo Kumalo, chief operating officer of Vodacom International, told reporters today in the Tanzanian commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.
Vodacom, majority owned by Newbury, England-based Vodafone, wants to generate 30 percent of service revenue outside its home market within four years, compared with about 22 percent now, Kumalo said.
Phone companies are developing mobile services such as M-Pesa to grow their business in Africa as revenue from voice calls declines.
Mobile-money transfers are a way for people to pay for services without cash in parts of the continent where banks are scarce. Vodacom has operations in Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lesotho as well as South Africa.
Vodacom Tanzania is adding as many as 150,000 M-Pesa customers a month, the country’s managing director Rene Meza said.
Monthly transactions total about $1.2 billion (R13.4 billion), he said.
The company is considering a move into other international markets and may be interested in fixed-line assets, Kumalo said.
Vodacom shares gained 0.6 percent to 128.50 rand as of 4:18 p.m. in Johannesburg, paring the year’s decline to 3.4 percent. - Bloomberg News