>Airtel launches promotion on its money transfer platform. Airtel has launched a one month promotion to encourage subscribers to use its money transfer platform. Despite mobile number portability, there has been limited porting with our estimates looking at less than 20,000 subscribers having been lost by Safaricom. Competitors attribute the stickiness of subscribers to the network on M-Pesa, Safaricom’s version of money transfer. The promotion on Airtel money transfer offers free transfers to all networks, while maintaining the other charges such as withdrawal. Airtel has also added the number of outlets to 5,000 although this still represents about 20% of outlets that Safaricom runs. Mobile money transfer revenues (financial services) are the key earnings driver for Safaricom’s growth and contribute approximately half of non voice revenues alongside data. For FY11, non voice revenue accounted for 33% of total revenues. We see limited success for Airtel with the ongoing promotion, partly due to limited coverage- but the steps it is taking are important if it is to compete effectively in the Kenyan market - From Stanbic Investments!
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