Nairobi will host the African headquarters of M-Pesa, after the brand was successfully acquired by South Africa’s Vodacom, and its Kenyan subsidiary, Safaricom, from UK-based telecoms giant Vodafone.

“Nairobi will now host the Africa head office for the Joint Venture, we’re excited that the management, support and development of the M-Pesa platform has now been relocated to Kenya,” outgoing Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph told The EastAfrican.

The newly-created joint venture is expected to oversee the expansion of M-Pesa into other African markets and puts the Kenyan capital at a vantage position to oversee penetration of the money transfer and payments platform across the continent.

Launched by Safaricom in 2007, M-Pesa is the largest payment platform on the African continent. It has 40 million users in Kenya, Tanzania, Lesotho, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Mozambique and Egypt and processes over a billion transactions every month.

Read more on: The EastAfrican