LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE MONEY SUMMIT 2011: Kenya’s M-PESA and Cambodia’s Wing both plan to expand their mobile money schemes into new areas such as banking, online payments and B2B settlements.

Kenya’s M-PESA – operated by Safaricom – has already established itself as one of the world’s most successful mobile money schemes. Safaricom’s chief officer of new products, Betty Mwangi, updated delegates on the latest numbers: the operator now has 14 million M-PESA customers, representing almost 80 percent of its total subscriber base, and 27,000 agents nationwide. 

It has also signed up 700,000 customers to its M-KESHO mobile banking service (a JV with Equity Bank); has 700 firms enrolled in  its utility bill payment scheme; and has 300 organisations enrolled to use M-PESA for salary payments and other disbursement services.

“We want to continue to drive revenue through new M-PESA services,” said Mwangi. Recent new features include airtime purchases, ATM withdrawal, physical payments (at participating merchants) and a new prepaid Visa card that can be topped up by M-PESA.

Meanwhile, Lee-Anne Pitcaithly, CEO of Wing, said the pioneering Cambodian mobile money transfer service was also expanding into new areas, including online gaming, ticketing and B2B reconciliation.

Launched in 2009 (and a subsidiary of Australia-based ANZ Bank), Pitcaithly said that Wing now had 750 agents nationwide making it the “largest reaching mobile financial service in Cambodia.” It is offered by six of the country’s seven MNOs. “It was difficult at first because we didn’t have a retail presence but we are quickly becoming ubiquitous,” she said.