M-Pesa, TigoPesa market shares shrink

A customer being attended by a money transfer services agent. PHOTO|FILE

What you need to know:

The decrease was mainly attributed to the introduction of new service providers including HaloPesa and TTCL Pesa.

Dar es Salaam. Market shares of M-Pesa and TigoPesa shrank in 2017, a quarterly report by the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) indicates.

The decrease was mainly attributed to the introduction of new service providers including HaloPesa and TTCL Pesa.

However, M-Pesa still led the market with 37 per cent, followed by TigoPesa’s 31 per cent and Airtel Money’s 27 per cent.

According to TCRA statistics, M-Pesa subscription market shrank to 37 per cent in 2017 from 42 per cent the previous year.

TigoPesa’s market share fell to 31 per cent from 34 per cent while that of Airtel Money rose to 27 per cent from 23 per cent during the same period.

Easy-Pesa maintained its subscription market share at one per cent.

HaloPesa and TTCL Pesa had 4 and 0.01 per cent respectively.

The TCRA statistics indicate that the number of mobile money customers for four operators increased to 21,889,618 in 2017 from 18,080,622 in 2016.

M-Pesa led the pack with 8,085,684 subscribers in 2017, up from 7,487,735 in 2017.

TigoPesa followed with 6,863,349 customers, up from 6,145,813.

The number of Airtel-Money and Easy-Pesa subscribers rose to 5,875,149 and 280,825 in 2017 from 4,214,048 and 233,026 respectively in 2016.

HaloPesa and TTCL Pesa had the lowest number of subscribers -- 781,476 and 3,135 respectively in 2017.

“They are still new in the business,” the report states.

HaloPesa started the business in April 2017 with 407,375 subscribers.

Payment trend

Tanzania’s most popular payment medium is cash but there are non-cash instruments like plastic cards, Electronic Funds Transfers (EFTs) as well as paper-based instruments.

Mobile payment services transacted a total of Sh36.9 trillion during the first six months of the current financial year, up from Sh30.2 trillion in the same period of the last financial year, according to the Bank of Tanzania.

Tanzania Interbank Settlement System (TISS) was leading having processed Sh85.7 trillion in the same period.

However, that was a decrease of eight per cent compared to the same period of the previous year in which the value of the transactions was Sh93.1 trillion.

Interoperability between the major mobile payment services providers has continued to contribute to substantial increase in transactions across network operators and therefore reducing the cost of mobile financial services.

During the first half of 2017/18, 44.8 million transactions valued at Sh1.9 trillion were processed, representing 123.8 per cent and 92.7 per cent increase in volume and value, respectively, compared to transactions recorded during the similar period of the preceding year.

Super agents of the mobile money services increased by eight per cent to 2,507 while the retail agents increased from 371,132 to 427,445.