How Airtel Money Is Eating Into Mpesa’s Market Share

Airtel mobile money service, Airtel Money has grown its market share to 7.6 per cent up from 2.9 per cent as of September 2024.

The growth has been fuelled by Aitel’s decision to eliminate transaction charges on Airtel-to-Airtel transfers, coupled with lower transaction fee when transferring to other networks.

Sending Sh1000 to other networks costs Sh11 compared to Sh13 for Safaricom’s Mpesa for the same amount. Withdrawing the same amount costs Sh25 on Airtel while Mpesa costs Sh29.

Airtel’s growth can be attributed to its effort to expand its Airtel agents, something that they have been lagging behind compared to Mpesa agents.

Currently there is a sharp increase in the number of mobile money agents (both Mpesa, Airtel and other providers), with 365,000 agents up from 347,700.

According to Communication Authority (CA), Mpesa’s market share declined to 9.2 per cent down from 97.0 per cent.

This comes at the time when mobile money users in Kenya have gone up to 40 million.  

“Subscriptions to mobile money services increased from 39.8 million to 40.6 million, translating to a penetration rate of 78.8 per cent,” CA, the industry regulator said in a statement.

CA attribute this trend to the increase in transaction limit on mobile money from Sh300,000 to Sh500,000 per day.