Utility company Kenya Power announced today that more than 70 per cent of its prepaid electricity users prefer to use mobile phones to buy electricity tokens than any other outlet, with the most popular money transfer service – by far – being Safaricom’s M-Pesa.

M-Pesa, says Kenya Power, accounts for 95 per cent of all mobile-based prepaid purchases.

John Wekesa, Kenya Power’s chief engineer in charge of pre-paid metering, said customers have always shown their preference for M-Pesa – and other mobile money services, such as Airtel Money – to purchase tokens since the initiation of the prepaid metering project four years ago.

He added, however, that around a quarter of prepaid electricity customers still prefer to use third-party vendors and supermarket outlets to buy their tokens, while about five per cent make purchases from the Kenya Power banking halls every month.

Kenya Power says it will extend the prepaid metering project to another 520,000 customers, migrating them from the post-pay system by the end of the financial year. The utility company currently has around 340,000 customers on its prepaid metering system.

Safaricom has long been keen on expanding the functionality of M-Pesa beyond money transfer. Last month, the Kenyan operator reportedly awarded Huawei a contract to upgrade the M-Pesa platform in order to make it easier for M-Pesa customers to settle their postpaid electricity bills and enable payments in real time, so avoiding unnecessary disconnections.