Kenyan operator Safaricom revealed talks with retail giant Amazon on the acceptance of payments using its m-Pesa mobile money platform in the country, Bloomberg reported.

Discussions around use of the mobile money service on Amazon’s online sales channels were unveiled by Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa (pictured) during the operator’s annual results press conference.

He noted tie-ups with the likes of Amazon were increasingly important across a range of areas, also citing cloud services.

M-Pesa makes up 33 per cent of the operator’s revenue and is used by its customers for a range of domestic and international transactions.

Safaricom already has a range of deals with international players in place to expand usage of the system including Visa, Alibaba, PayPal and Western Union.

The news came as the Vodafone affiliate revealed its performance in the year to end-March, with net profit down 6.8 per cent year-on-year to KES68 billion ($635.3 million), with revenue flat at KES250.35 billion.

As with its peers across the globe, earnings were hit by Covid-19 (coronavirus) lockdown measures. Among the factors impacting the operator was the waiving of fees on mobile money peer-to-peer transactions below KES1,000.

Revenue from m-Pesa fell 1 per cent, with the company also booking declines in messaging and voice services, partly offset by a boost from data usage.