Vodafone has announced that it is bringing the mobile money service, M-PESA to South Africa, to be deployed by Vodacom and its South African banking partner. With approximately 26 million people in South Africa without official bank accounts, M-PESA will enable millions of mobile phone subscribers who have access to a mobile phone, but do not have or have only limited access to a bank account, to send and receive money via their mobile phones.

The M-PESA service was developed by Vodafone and has already been deployed by Safaricom in Kenya, Vodacom in Tanzania and Roshan in Afghanistan (branded M-Paisa). More than 11 million registered customers now rely on their mobile phones for money transfer, airtime top-up and bill payments.