M-PESA, launched more than a decade ago by Safaricom, offers a range of mobile money options including payment services, loans and savings to more than 21 million people in Kenya. It has secured a deal to launch its M-PESA mobile payment service for online shopping on the Aliexpress.com website, owned by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.
Kenya’s telecom giant, Safaricom has said that it will partner with Ant Financial, a fintech company and an affiliate of Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company.
“The move especially targets microtraders in the country who source for goods and other supplies from manufacturers in China,” Ms Sylvia Mulinge, Safaricom’s chief customer officer said in a statement.
“We believe that the mobile phone has the ability to pull down some barriers to trade by enabling global e-commerce, and this partnership with Ant Financial Services marks yet another important milestone not just in Safaricom’s efforts to take M-Pesa beyond Kenya, but to Kenya’s participation in the international e-commerce marketplace,” she said.
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This payment option will make transactions go smoothly as customers don’t need a card to make payment. In recent times, we have seen the result of similar collaborations. Chinese shoppers can use the ‘We chat” app to make payments through their mobile phones at Dubai’s Mall of Emirate.
Kenyans shopping on Aliexpress.com will be presented with M-PESA as one of the payment options when checking out their shopping cart on the app or website. Once customers select M-PESA, they will then key in their mobile phone numbers and will subsequently receive a prompt on their phones to type their M-PESA PIN to complete the payment.
Safaricom said that the deal was part of an effort to transform M-PESA into a global payment. This partnership will be managed by Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba that runs the portal’s payment services. It will make M-PESA one of the payment options with transactions in Kenyan Shillings.
The service is already live in the AliExpress app and will be made available on aliexpress.com in coming weeks.