Safaricom has taken a major step to strengthen its position in Kenya’s booming digital economy by integrating PayPal withdrawals directly into the M-PESA super app.
This new feature is designed to support the growing number of Kenyan freelancers and remote workers who rely on PayPal to receive payments from international clients.
By eliminating the need for third-party platforms or external web portals, Safaricom is making cross-border transactions faster, more seamless, and accessible marking a strategic move to capture a larger share of the country’s expanding freelance and gig economy.
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Previously, users had to rely on a separate web portal to transfer funds from PayPal to M-PESA, a process often criticized for being slow and cumbersome.
The newly added mini app eliminates those steps, offering a seamless, in-app experience without the need for browser redirects or multiple logins. This marks the first time Kenyan users can withdraw directly from PayPal via the M-PESA app.
This update comes amid strong growth in Safaricom’s mobile money segment. M-PESA’s revenue for the year ending March 2025 was KES 161.1 billion (approximately USD 1.25 billion). This represents a 15.2% year-on-year growth for Safaricom’s mobile money service.
The growth was driven by a 20.3% increase in chargeable transactions per user and a 10.5% rise in monthly active customers, now totaling 35.82 million. M-PESA now contributes 43.4% of Safaricom’s total service revenue.
Average revenue per user rose by 9.4% to KES 395.22 ($3.06), while Safaricom’s agent network grew 14.1% to nearly 299,000, ensuring widespread access to cash services. The M-PESA app itself has seen strong traction, with 13.7 million downloads and 4.7 million active users. In 2024 alone, it processed transactions worth KES 2.3 trillion ($17.83 billion).
Notably, M-PESA wallets now support balances up to KES 500,000 ($3,875), with individual transaction and daily limits also capped at KES 250,000 ($1,938) and KES 500,000, respectively.
Launched in 2007 by Safaricom and Vodafone in Kenya, M-Pesa has transformed financial access across Africa, becoming the continent’s leading mobile money service. The name, derived from “M” for mobile and “Pesa” (Swahili for money), reflects its core mission: enabling fast, secure, and accessible financial transactions via mobile phones, particularly for the unbanked.
By empowering affordable access to useful financial services for more than 60 million customers and 5 million businesses, M-PESA has been credited with largely contributing to an up to 60% growth in formal financial inclusion in different countries, with up to 84% of the population achieving formal financial inclusion.
In March 2024, M-Pesa boasted over 66.2 million customers and processed 33 billion transactions annually across seven African countries: Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana, and Ethiopia.
With the latest integration of PayPal withdrawals directly into the M-PESA app, Safaricom is positioning itself to capture greater transaction volumes, strengthen user retention, and reinforce its dominance in Kenya’s mobile money market.
Also, the PayPal-M-Pesa integration has been poised to be a game-changer for Kenya’s digital economy, with M-Pesa’s 30 million users in Kenya (out of 66.2 million globally) processing $4 billion in transactions annually. The service has empowered freelancers, small businesses, and online shoppers by bridging local mobile money with global payment systems.
This pivotal update aligns with M-Pesa’s evolution into a super app, which has seen it incorporate services like Pochi la Biashara, bill payments, and government services, positioning it as a rival to platforms like Flutterwave’s Send App for cross-border transactions.
Also, the integration supports financial inclusion, particularly for Kenya’s unbanked and underbanked populations, by enabling access to global markets without traditional banking infrastructure.