Nairobi, May 12 -- The share of M-Pesa in Safaricom mobile service revenue has deepened to 41.5 percent as earnings from voice and text messaging came under pressure from applications such as WhatsApp.

Safaricom's mobile service revenue in the financial year ended March 2023 grew by 4.6 percent to Sh282.23 billion, with M-Pesa accounting for Sh117.19 billion or 41.5 percent compared with 39.9 percent in the previous year.

The latest share of M-Pesa in mobile service revenue is the highest in the history of the telco and has come on the back of the share of voice and SMS revenue declining due to customers' growing preference for internet calls and messaging apps such as WhatsApp.

Voice and messaging - which were for years the mainstay o...