Safaricom Pays Sh20.5B to Get Mpesa Licensed in Ethiopia

Safaricom has paid Sh20.5 billion to the Ethiopian government to obtain mobile financial services license for Mpesa.

“We have paid $150 million to be able to acquire the license. We always consider this as part of a one-off license. It does not require us to pay any other license going forward,” Ndegwa said while releasing the firm’s 2022–23 financial results in Nairobi.

“We are going to be regulated in the same way that we are regulated in Kenya in terms of a payment instrument issuer,” the CEO added.

The license, offered by the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBK), will allow the telco to tap the country’s over 100 million populations, with a majority of them still underserved and unserved.

It became the first foreign entity to be granted a license by the state.

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With the new license, the telco will now be able to offer services such as mobile banking, mobile wallets, internet banking, and card banking.

“And I know that the National Bank of Ethiopia is already preparing for issuing the detailed credentials guidelines about how we operate,” Ndegwa said.

“But based on what we have seen they are largely similar to the other markets where our mobile money is operating.”