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Safaricom
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Safaricom PLC
Safaricom Logo.png
Safaricom logo
Safaricomhouse.jpg
Safaricom House, Waiyaki Way, Nairobi
Trade name
Safaricom (SCOM)
Type
Public Limited Company; owned by Vodacom 35%, Permanent Secretary (The Treasury) 35%, Vodafone 5% & retail investors 25%
Industry Telecommunications
Founded 1997 Edit this on Wikidata
Headquarters Safaricom House, Nairobi, Kenya
Key people
Peter Ndegwa, CEO
Products G.S.M related products and Mobile Money Transfer
Brands
M-Pesa
Masoko
Songa
M-Pesa1Tap
Services
Mobile Telephony
Mobile Money transfer
Consumer electronics
Ecommerce
Cloud computing
Data
Music Streaming
Fibre Optic
Revenue Increase KES240.3 Billion (2019)
Operating income
Increase KES79.91 Billion (2019)
Net income
Increase KES63.4 billion (2019)
Number of employees
6,477+ (2019)
Website www.safaricom.co.ke
Safaricom PLC is a listed Kenyan mobile network operator headquartered at Safaricom House in Nairobi, Kenya.[1] It is the largest telecommunications provider in Kenya, and one of the most profitable companies in the East and Central African region.[2] The company offers mobile telephony, mobile money transfer, consumer electronics, ecommerce, cloud computing, data, music streaming, and fibre optic services. It is most renowned as the home of MPESA, a mobile banking SMS-based service.
Safaricom controls approximately 63.5% percent of the Kenyan market as at 30 June 2019.[3][4][5] Safaricom had a subscriber base estimated at approximately 33.1 million.[3][6]
In terms of voice market and SMS market share Safaricom controls 56.8% and 95.5% respectively.[3]
Safaricom was formed in 1997 as a fully owned subsidiary of Telkom Kenya. In May 2000, Vodafone Group PLC of the United Kingdom acquired a 40% stake and management responsibility for the company.[7] In 2008, the government offered 25% of its shares to the public through the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
Safaricom was ranked as Africa's Best Employer, 67th in the World by the Forbes Global 200 list of World's Best Employers. In March 2018, Safaricom was ranked as the #1 company to work for in the annual BrighterMonday Best 100 Companies to Work for in Kenya according to career professionals and job seekers.[8]
As of December 2017, Safaricom employed over 4,500 people, of whom 75 per cent were based in Nairobi, the Headquarters, with the remainder based in other big cities like Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and Eldoret, in which it operates retail outlets. It has nationwide dealerships to ensure customers across the country have access to its products and services.
In November 2012, Safaricom announced it would be offering a new mobile phone banking product in conjunction with the Commercial Bank of Africa, tapping into an underdeveloped financial services market.[9]
On 1 November 2010, Bob Collymore was appointed chief executive officer, succeeding Michael Joseph (businessman).[10] Collymore died on 1 July 2019.[11] Michael Joseph was appointed by the Safaricom PLC board to succeed Bob Collymore in acting capacity.[12]
On 24 October 2019, The Safaricom board of directors appointed Mr. Peter Ndegwa Chief Executive Officer effective 1 April 2020.[13]
Contents
1 History
1.1 Kipokezi service
2 M-PESA
2.1 History
2.2 How it works
2.3 M-Pesa’s usage and success in Kenya
2.3.1 Elsewhere
2.3.1.1 South Africa
2.3.1.2 Tanzania
2.3.1.3 India
3 Shareholding
4 See also
5 References
History
2G service on 900 MHz and 1800 MHz. 3G DC-HSPA+ service on 900 MHz & 2100 MHz. Safaricom later launched LTE-A (4G service with carrier aggregation) service in Nairobi and Mombasa on band 20 (800 MHz) and band 3 (1800 MHz) in December 2014 and has expanded to other cities.[14] Safaricom's competitors, Airtel Kenya and Telkom Kenya have expressed dissatisfaction with the way the regulatory body Communications Authority of Kenya, awarded Safaricom its LTE license to operate at 800 MHz.[15]
Safaricom was the first company in Kenya to possess 3G Internet technology with recent success of 4G / LTE connectivity currently in all major Kenyan cities.[16]
Flashback service ('Please Call Me most of Safaricom's customers, network congestion emerges from a practice called 'flashing'. Flashing is the practice of calling another mobile user, but disconnecting before the connected call is answered. It provides a method for mobile users to alert someone that they wish to be called, but either can't, or won't, pay for the call. The method is cost-free for the users; but costly in network bandwidth.[17]
That is why Safaricom introduced a flashback service that gave every subscriber five free SMS messages with a single predefined message stating "Please call me. Thank you". Although the messages can be annoying when sent just for fun they can prove useful when one is in trouble and has no airtime. It also gives parents more of a reason to get mobile phones for their children without the real need for getting them airtime.[17]
Kipokezi service
Safaricom launched the Kipokezi service in May 2000 that enabled its subscribers to send and receive email and online chat through standard mobile phones. The service does not require users to have an Internet connection as it uses ForgetMeNot Africa’s Handset Initiation technology. Prior to the service fewer than one in ten Kenyans had accessed the Internet but the Kipokezi launch allowed more than a third of the population to exchange email and online chat messages.[18]
M-PESA
Main article: M-Pesa
History
This system is remotely comparable to hawala banking, but much better technologically. An M-PESA-enabled mobile phone can also function as an electronic wallet and can hold up to 100,000 Kenyan shilling (approx. US$1,000). Safaricom has announced that it intends to roll out M-PESA to other countries.[19]
M-PESA (M for mobile, pesa is Swahili for money) is a mobile phone-based money transfer, financing and micro financing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone for Safaricom and Vodacom. M-PESA was originally designed as a system to allow microfinance-loan repayments to be made by phone, reducing the costs associated with handling cash. After the pilot testing it was broadened to become a general money-transfer scheme.
How it works
Once a user registers for M-PESA, they pay money into the system by handing cash at an M-Pesa agent, who then credits the money to the user's M-Pesa account. The user then gets an SMS notifying them of the transaction.
A user withdraws money by visiting an agent, who checks that the user has sufficient funds before debiting the user's account and handing over the cash. An M-Pesa user can also transfer money to others using a menu on their phone. Cash can thus be sent one place to another instantly, safely and easily. This is in contrast to the preferred system before where money was sent by a porter, usually a friend, relative or bus crew, to the intended recipient.
M-PESA was first launched by the Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom, where Vodafone was technically a minority shareholder (40%), in March 2007. M-PESA quickly captured a significant market share for cash transfers and grew to 17 million subscribers by December 2011 in Kenya alone
The growth of the service forced formal banking institutions to take note of the new venture. In December 2008, a group of banks reportedly lobbied the Kenyan finance minister to audit M-PESA, in an effort to at least slow the growth of the service. This ploy failed, as the audit found that the service was robust. At this time, The Banking Act did not provide the basis to regulate products offered by non-banks, of which M-PESA was one such very successful product. As at November 2014, M-PESA transactions for the 11 months of 2014 were valued at KES. 2.1 trillion, a 28% increase from 2013, and almost half the value of the country's GDP.
On November 19, 2014, Safaricom launched a companion android app Safaricom M-Ledger for its M-PESA users. The application, currently available only on Android, gives M-PESA users a historical view of all their transactions.
M-Pesa’s usage and success in Kenya
M-Pesa has been particularly successful in Kenya, compared to mobile money platforms in other countries. Contributing factors here include the exceptionally high cost of sending money by other methods; the dominant market position of Safaricom;the regulator's initial decision to allow the scheme to proceed on an experimental basis, without formal approval; a clear and effective marketing campaign (“Send money home”); an efficient system to move cash around behind the scenes; and, the post-election violence in the country in early 2008.
During the post-election violence, M-Pesa was used to transfer money to people trapped in Nairobi's slums at the time. Some Kenyans regarded M-PESA as a safer place to store their money than the banks, which were entangled in ethnic disputes. Having established a base of initial users, M-PESA then benefitted from network effects: the more people who used it, the more it made sense for others to sign up for it.
M-PESA has since been extended to offer loans and savings products, and can also be used to disburse salaries or pay bills, which saves users further time and money as compared to doing so from banks.
M-PESA has a wide range of financial services including Person to Person, ATM withdrawal, Payments, Bulk Payments and Bank to M-PESA
As of January 2016, M-Pesa is used by 21.8 million Kenyans, with over 1.5 million of M-Pesa users using the bill payment feature. At the time M-Pesa had a network of over 90,000 agent outlets.
Average value of monthly person to person transfers on M-Pesa was Kshs 106B while Person to Business transfers were at Kshs 23.5bn and Business to Person at Kshs 27.8bn per month.
M-Pesa is in partnership with a number of banks. M-Shwari and KCB M-Pesa are two such services, which provide access to savings and loans to users. |