M-KOPA: Financing Progress for Africa’s Every Day Earners
Across Africa, the majority of people don’t earn a monthly pay cheque. They earn every day, in small amounts, through work that is informal and resourceful. Nearly 86% of working adults build their livelihoods this way. Yet the world’s financial infrastructure was never designed with them in mind, leaving over 350 million people across Africa excluded from the services that could help their income go further.
M-KOPA was built to close that gap by helping people access productive assets through affordable credit. For most of our customers today, that asset is a smartphone. Every M-KOPA smartphone comes with embedded digital financial services including health insurance, digital loans and data bundles. More than a luxury, a smartphone represents access and serves as a gateway to unlocked potential and opportunity.
Our credit model was built to mirror the way our customers earn their living, mostly in daily increments thus the name every day earners. Because that is how our customers earn, it is how we collect. Small, micro payments through mobile money, mirroring the rhythm of their income rather than asking them to adapt to ours.
The financing of the smartphone represents for many, their first ever credit. Most have been locked out of accessing formal credit due to the requirements of traditional financial services providers who require a formal credit history or collateral to qualify. for formal credit. We make formal credit accessible by removing these barriers,The first product, the smartphone is the start of a long term financial relationship. Every payment made builds a credit history with the smartphone serving as their collateral to qualify for additional credit – similar to how a home mortgage can be used to unlock access to additional credit.
Today, M-KOPA has reached over 10 million customers across Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, with 10 million smartphones delivered. The business processes over 2 million payments a day, and welcomes more than 10,000 new customers daily, through a direct sales network of 50,000.
Our impact extends beyond the phone. In Kenya, the first market where we offer e-motorbike financing, M-KOPA is the leading provider, having enabled more than 10,000 riders to make the switch to electric. Across much of Africa, the motorbike is the backbone of everyday transport: it’s how most people get to work, how goods move to market, and, for millions of riders, how a living is earned, standing in for the formal public transport infrastructure found elsewhere. Enabling motorbike riders to make the transition from petrol to electric has had direct financial benefits, saving them an average of US$5.62 a day on fuel and maintenance. It’s the same principle behind the smartphone model, applied to a different asset: make something productive affordable to own, and the income, independence and opportunity it unlocks follow.
What began as a pay-as-you-go solar business in Kenya in 2010 has grown into a pan-African fintech, present where the opportunity is greatest and the need is real. Nearly three-quarters of our customers tell us their ability to earn a living has improved because of M-KOPA.
This is financial progress, built for Africa’s every day earners.
