M-KOPA has surpassed 5 million customers across Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa. Two million of these customers have come onboard in the past 15 months.
M-KOPA’s model makes affordable smartphones embedded with financial services available to ‘Every Day Earners’: the wide majority of African adults who earn their income daily but struggle to afford smartphones and typically fail to qualify for conventional financial services.
To date, M-KOPA has supported its customer base with more than US $1.5 billion in financing.
Starting with smartphone access, customers gain entry to the digital economy with an affordable daily repayment model, which fits their daily income and cash flow and makes it easier to manage. By leveraging rich payments data and proprietary AI-driven analytics, M-KOPA builds a credit record for each customer which forms the foundation for a long-term financial relationship for lower cost digital loans, affordable data subscriptions and medical insurance.
According to M-KOPA co-founder and CEO, Jesse Moore: “We are thrilled to welcome our 5 millionth customer to M-KOPA this month. The scale of our operations and our positive impact on customers is what keeps us working hard to go even further. We’re just getting started; the opportunity for much larger impact and scale is right in front of us.”
M-KOPA is working to further increase its percentage of female customers to 50%, to reduce its carbon footprint by making circularity central to its smartphone supply chain, and to continue pioneering green products like electric motorbikes that contribute to the health and sustainability of the communities where it operates.
M-KOPA, Chief Product Officer Nena Sanderson, says: “Our product and services build pathways to prosperity for our customers and agents, enabling them to overcome financial setbacks, generate income and progress towards the futures they aspire to. Our impact extends beyond our customers, reaching their families and communities, and contributing to building a more sustainable world.”
Headquartered in London, UK, M-KOPA creates employment for more than 3,000 staff and 30,000 commission-based sales agents across Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.