M-Pesa processed 614 million transactions per month by the end of last year with 29.5 million active customers across 10 markets, Vodafone revealed.

In a statement celebrating the tenth anniversary of the m-Pesa’s first launch in Kenya – by Vodafone associate Safaricom – the operator group said six billion transactions were made on the platform in 2016 with further strong growth towards the end of the year.

Although the company hasn’t regularly submitted annual statistics for the service, in 2015 it announced two billion transactions had been made in the six months to September 2015.

Following its debut in Kenya during 2007, m-Pesa was rolled-out to Tanzania (2008), South Africa (2010), Democratic Republic of Congo (2012), Mozambique (2013), Lesotho (2013), India (2013), Egypt (2013), Romania (2014), Albania (2015) and Ghana (2015).

While the service received praise for the transformational impact on several societies – notably Kenya – it hasn’t taken off to the same level in every market, with Vodacom dropping the service in South Africa in May 2016 after concluding it wasn’t gaining enough traction in the country.

Vodafone Group MD of M-Pesa, Michael Joseph, said: “M-Pesa is a revolution that has empowered tens of millions of people in some of the poorest communities in the world to start and grow businesses and gain greater financial resilience.

“All of us at Vodafone are very proud of how M-Pesa has enhanced our customers’ daily lives and helped them plan for the future with confidence.”