Despite its growing maturity, Kenya’s Safaricom managed a 20 per cent growth in revenues to KES 12.5 billion ($146 million) for its M-Pesa mobile money service in the first fiscal half of 2014 (April-September 2013).

The revenue growth was driven by an increase in M-Pesa activity. The operator said it saw a 19 per cent jump in 30-day active subscribers to the money service to 11.6 million during the six-month period.

And M-Pesa made a major contributor to the operator’s overall H1 FY14 revenue, accounting for 18 per cent of the total KES 69 billion. Total net income grew by 45 per cent to KES 11.3 billion.

M-Pesa success has come off the back of a dramatic growth of 33,300 in the number of agents distributing M-Pesa to 79,000.

However, the proportion of total revenue represented by M-Pesa has remained flat year-on-year, although the growth curve is upwards from H1 FY12 (16 per cent) and H1 FY11 (11 per cent).

The company is also looking to bring on new revenue streams, such as its mobile banking service called M-Shwari and Lipa na M-Pesa, which enables users to make payments for goods and services with merchants.