Friday, Mar 29, 2024 | Last Update : 07:38 PM IST

  Technology   In Other news  25 Feb 2018  Google starts taking payments for apps via Kenya's M-Pesa service

Google starts taking payments for apps via Kenya's M-Pesa service

REUTERS
Published : Feb 25, 2018, 7:24 am IST
Updated : Feb 25, 2018, 7:24 am IST

M-Pesa, which enables customers to transfer money and pay bills via phone, has 27.8 million users in the nation of 45 million people.

Mahir Sain says this is very important to the developer ecosystem in markets where credit card penetration is low.
 Mahir Sain says this is very important to the developer ecosystem in markets where credit card penetration is low.

Google Play apps and games store has started accepting payments in Kenya through Safaricom’s mobile phone M-Pesa service to boost downloads in a market where many people do not have a credit card.

M-Pesa, which enables customers to transfer money and pay bills via mobile phone, has 27.8 million users in the nation of 45 million people where Google’s Android platform dominates. M-Pesa has been mimicked across Africa and in other markets.

“This is very important to the developer ecosystem in markets where credit card penetration is low,” said Mahir Sain, head of Africa Android partnerships at Google, which is owned by Alphabet.

Safaricom has 13 million smartphones on its network, most of them using the Android platform. It partnered with London-based global payments platform provider, DOCOMO Digital, to enable users to pay through M-Pesa, both firms said on February 22. 

Safaricom started M-Pesa in 2007, offering money transfer services to users. It has grown to allow users to make payments for goods and services through thousands of merchants. It also allows users to save, borrow and buy insurance, through partnerships with commercial banks.

Tags: google, search engine, m-pesa