Vodacom Group’s fintech business has crossed a major threshold, topping 100 million customers for the first time and underlining just how central mobile money has become to the telecoms giant’s growth story. In its latest annual results, the JSE-listed group said it ended the year to 31 March 2026 with 103 million active financial services users, a number that puts Vodacom firmly among Africa’s most powerful digital finance players.
The figure marks 17.4% year-on-year growth from the 87.7 million reported a year earlier. It also includes Kenya’s Safaricom on a 100% basis, even though Vodacom holds a 34.94% effective interest in the business. That distinction matters, but the headline is clear: Vodacom’s mobile money and broader fintech push is scaling fast, and it is doing so across multiple markets rather than relying on one country alone.
Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub said financial services remain one of the company’s most important growth pillars. He described the unit as a strong driver of inclusion and confirmed that the group has now lifted its Vision 2030 target for financial services customers to 130 million, up from 120 million. For a business already operating at this scale, that is a meaningful upgrade and a signal that management still sees plenty of room to expand.
The numbers also show that fintech is no longer just a side business for Vodacom. Financial services revenue rose 19.6% to R16.8-billion on a reported basis, or 23.1% on a normalised basis. That outpaced the group’s 12.9% normalised growth in total service revenue, pushing fintech’s share of consolidated service revenue to 12.6%. For investors, that mix shift is important: it suggests the company is increasingly earning more from higher-value digital financial products rather than only from voice and data.
Excluding Safaricom, Vodacom’s consolidated fintech customer base reached 59.3 million, up from 50.7 million. Safaricom’s own M-Pesa platform added 43.7 million active customers on a 100% basis, showing the scale of Vodacom’s exposure to East Africa’s most established mobile money ecosystem. Across the group, the business has now moved well beyond basic transfers and cash-in, cash-out services into lending, insurance, merchant payments and savings.
Vodacom financial services growth is being driven by Egypt and South Africa
One of the standout stories in Vodacom’s financial services growth is Egypt, which has become the group’s most powerful expansion market. Vodafone Cash revenue in the country jumped 48.2% in local currency, accounting for 8.7% of Egyptian service revenue. Active fintech users in Egypt climbed by more than three million over the year to 14.7 million, an increase of 28.5%.
That puts Egypt just behind South Africa as Vodacom’s second-largest consolidated fintech market by customer count. South Africa currently stands at 15.3 million fintech users, and the local business remains a crucial part of the broader digital finance strategy. Here, Vodacom’s fintech arm is anchored by the VodaPay super-app, which is becoming a more visible part of the company’s consumer offering.
In South Africa, fintech revenue increased 8.1% to R3.7-billion. Insurance was the strongest contributor, with policies spanning contract, device, funeral and life cover reaching three million. The merchant network also continued to widen, growing to more than 11 200 acceptance points. That merchant footprint matters because it helps turn Vodacom’s payments ecosystem into something that can be used in everyday retail, not just person-to-person transfers.
The story is similar across Vodacom’s international footprint, which includes Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Lesotho. In those markets, M-Pesa revenue rose 22.8% on a normalised basis to R9.9-billion. Tanzania remained the largest international fintech market, contributing R5-billion in revenue. The international M-Pesa merchant base also grew sharply, increasing 32.3% to 705 000.
Another notable shift is the growing contribution from what Vodacom calls “beyond core” services. These include lending, savings, insurance and merchant offerings. Together, they accounted for 46.4% of M-Pesa revenue, edging closer to overtaking the traditional peer-to-peer and cash movement functions that first defined mobile money across Africa. This matters because it shows the business is deepening, not just growing wider. Loans facilitated across the international business also increased 13% to R26.7-billion.
For the wider sector, Vodacom’s results come amid intensifying competition and rapid expansion in African mobile money. Rival MTN Group recently crossed its own landmark when its MoMo platform processed $500.3-billion in transaction value in the year to 31 December 2025, up 37.6% in constant currency. That moved MTN past the half-trillion-dollar level for the first time.
Vodacom’s own mobile money platforms, including Safaricom, processed $525.6-billion, up 16.6%. Put together, the two giants now process well over $1-trillion in annual transaction value. That is a striking figure for a region where mobile money was once viewed as a niche workaround for the unbanked, rather than a core financial infrastructure layer.
For South Africa, the implications are significant. Vodacom’s progress shows that mobile money is no longer just about convenience; it is becoming part of the financial backbone of large parts of the continent. As we have reported before, the real contest now is not merely who has the biggest customer base, but who can turn those customers into active users of broader, more profitable financial products. On that score, Vodacom’s latest numbers suggest the race is only getting hotter.