For South Africa-based Vodacom, registering a higher subscriber level for M-Pesa is only part of its agenda, as the number and financial value of transactions on the mobile money service seems to loom larger in its thinking.

In the operator’s Q3 (end-December 2014) results, it said M-Pesa numbers increased by 29.7 per cent to 7.6 million users.

Vodacom says the 7.6 million figure represents the number of unique customers who have generated revenue related to any M-Pesa activity during the last three months. Of this total, 5.5 million have been active in the past 30 days (up from 4.4 million in Q3 2014).

Yet for the operator, which is also present in Tanzania, DRC, Mozambique and Lesotho in addition to South Africa, “volume and value” of M-Pesa transactions also matter.

The operator talked up how it now has more than 1.3 million users on its M-Pawa savings and loan service in Tanzania (that country has always been something of an early adopter for money services). The take-up of M-Pawa resulted in a seven per cent uplift in M-Pesa’s ARPU after its launch in September last year, Vodacom added.