26 April 2019

Safaricom has expanded its e-commerce reach in Kenya by providing mobile payment services on online store Aliexpress.com.

The company has partnered with the Chinese run web business under Alibaba Group, to use M-Pesa as a payment option.

It has been predicted that it could boost the telco’s daily mobile money transactions, which currently stand at 17 million or 25,000 transactions per minute, as more Kenyans start to favour online shopping driven by increased internet access.

“This partnership seeks to connect Kenyans to even more business opportunities by enabling them to seamlessly source, purchase and import goods from the world’s leading manufacturers,”

said Safaricom chief customer officer Sylvia Mulinge. Under the terms of the deal, Ant Financial, which runs the portal’s payment services, will offer M-Pesa as one of the payment options with transactions denominated in the Kenyan shilling.