Borrowing on Fuliza: Kenyans have borrowed some staggering Sh. 45 billion on Fuliza in four months. This was revealed during the release of the Safaricom financial results for the year ended March 31, 2019.
“We launched the Fuliza after realizing that customers were canceling millions of M-Pesa transactions every day due to insufficient funds in their mobile wallets,” said safaricom CEO Bob Collymore.
This means that borrowing on Fuliza is now taking position as one of the leading revenue generating channels for Safaricom. It also means that over the past four months, Safaricom has loaned out more money than most mainstream banks in Kenya.
Safaricom is set to take its M-Pesa overdraft Fuliza loans service to six new African countries. These countries include Tanzania, Lesotho, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mozambique. Safaricom has already introduced M-Pesa services in these countries, mainly through its host company known as Vodacom.
“What we have also done with Fuliza is looked at it not just from a Kenyan perspective, but with our (parent) company Vodacom. There are seven countries in Africa that run M-Pesa and we’ll be looking into taking Fuliza to those markets first,” said Safaricom’s Chief Financial Services Officer Sitoyo Lopokoiyit. “It’s in line with the idea to take other products and services we have developed in Kenya into other markets.”
READ MORE: Safaricom posts a record Sh. 63.4 billion net profit
During the financial year, Safaricom announced that it had scored a net profit of Sh. 63.4 billion. The highlights of the Safaricom results were as follows:
- Service revenue growth of 7 per cent to Sh.240.30 billion.
- Voice service (incoming and outgoing) revenue grew by 0.3 per cent to Sh. 95.94 billion.
- M-PESA revenue grew by 19.2 percent to Sh.74.99 billion.
- Mobile data revenue increased by 6.4 per cent to Sh. 38.69 billion.
- Messaging revenue declined by 1.3 percent to Sh. 17.50 billion.
- Fixed service revenue increased by 22.7 per cent to Sh. 8.19 billion.
- Total customer base increased by 7.7 percent to 31.8 million.
- 30-day active M-PESA customers increased 10.2 percent to 22.6 million.
- 30-day active mobile data customers increased 6.6 percent to 18.8 million.