OREANDA-NEWS. Huawei today announced that its Mobile Money Platform is now supporting the M-PESA service for Safaricom, the leading mobile network operator in Kenya (part owned by Vodafone). Migrating the service to Huawei’s open, secure, flexible and high performing Mobile Money Platform has realized the goal of “bringing M-PESA home” to Safaricom users. The platform migrated all 12.8 million active subscribers overnight, and will facilitate Safaricom rapidly improving functionality for users across the country.

M-PESA in Kenya

M-PESA is a Vodafone branded digital financial service (DFS) which provides a true value add service to an operator’s subscribers and leverages existing investments in network and IT platforms. The M-PESA infrastructure extends the delivery of basic financial services and payments to the large number of unbanked citizens in Kenya, providing a personal and social impact on their lives. The M-PESA business is also supporting entrepreneurial businesses to develop in Kenya. The scale and use of the M-PESA solution allows operators to offer a significantly lower transaction cost compared to traditional bank services. M-PESA in Kenya is the largest M-PESA deployment within Vodafone Group and the largest Mobile Financial Service (MFS) globally.

Huawei and Vodafone Collaboration

Huawei built its Mobile Money Platform to deliver basic banking transactions in developing countries. The technology is not restricted to particular handset types, working on both smartphones and feature phones, this has been key to the success in developing markets.

Since 2012, Huawei and Vodafone have been closely engaged from a business investment and technical perspective to develop the M-PESA service. The partnership has delivered the functionalities and capabilities required for launching a MFS in a market without an existing business, as demonstrated by Vodafone Romania, and migrating a live market to a new platform as demonstrated by the Safaricom transfer. Huawei remains dedicated to working with Vodafone to continue delivering innovation to their customers, through professional services, and local market support.

Owen Thomas, Programme Manager, Huawei said, “We are delighted to announce the migration of M-PESA to Safaricom in Kenya is now complete. Over the last three years we have built a strong partnership with Vodafone, and building on the success of the Safaricom migration, we will work together to expand the service in other markets.”

Bob Collymore, CEO, Safaricom said, "This is a great achievement for all involved. The management team at Kenya Safaricom give our heartfelt thanks to Huawei for finishing a complex and challenging project. This migration is not only a milestone between Safaricom and Huawei, but also a key milestone for the Vodafone Group and Vodafone Africa."

Vodafone and Safaricom Post Migration

Since migration, Vodafone and Safaricom have been impressed by the speed and stability of M-PESA transactions on the Huawei Mobile Money Platform. The new platform delivers an improved performance for users and Safaricom including:

  • Improved availability for subscribers and agents to execute transactions.
  • Faster query resolution time, through a Kenya based support team.
  • Faster transaction processing for subscribers.
  • An open application program interface (API) for third party integration.
  • Enhanced call center integration, ensuring customer experience is consistently high quality.
  • Security measures mirror the financial services industry best practice standards.
  • Real-time system monitoring.

Michael Joseph, Director of Mobile Money, Vodafone Group, commented on the migration, he said, "Four years ago we started a journey that has resulted in the great success demonstrated today. Moving M-PESA onto the Huawei Mobile Money Platform is probably one of the most important IT and migration projects that many of us have ever worked on. The result is a huge milestone not only for Safaricom and Vodafone, but also for Kenya."

About the Huawei Mobile Money Platform

The Huawei Mobile Money platform forms part of Huawei’s wider ‘Building a better connected world’ strategy. The platform offers a highly flexible and scalable solution based on encryption technology and carrier-grade infrastructure, to ensure secure banking transactions. The platform works with all mobile handset models in the market and can be easily integrated with an organization to create a comprehensive mobile money ecosystem. The platform supports basic banking transactions including:

1) Point-to-point (P2P) transfers

2) Cash in, cash out transactions

3) Savings and loan integration

4) Bill payments

5) ATM integration

6) International money transfers

The future of Huawei Mobile Money Platform is being developed in consultation with operators and is expected to include mobile commerce and mobile lifestyle.