36 Vodafone Group Plc Annual Report 2026
Strategic report
Governance
Financials
Other information
Empowering People continued
Financial Inclusion Financial inclusion is essential to support the reduction of extreme poverty and delivers significant social benefits and economic opportunities, with digital technology playing a key role in providing access to safe and secure financial services. In our African markets, our financial inclusion solutions create opportunities for individuals, collectives, and enterprises to actively participate in the economy via access to financial products and services, available through multiple channels. Services include money transfers, bill payments, and e-commerce, amongst others. In partnership with licensed financial institutions, customers can also access savings, investments, lending, and insurance. We have built an extensive and diverse financial services business, developing products that cut across consumer segments and geographies and unlock strategic opportunities with our key partners. Our financial services diversify and enhance our growth and returns profile. We differentiate ourselves by leveraging global technology partnerships and our centres of excellence to deliver attractive returns for our shareholders while creating exciting propositions for our customers. Strategy Our financial inclusion strategy draws on a dual-sided ecosystem, bringing consumers and merchants together, allowing our merchants to expand their addressable markets while creating value for the customer. Consumers and merchants are provided with personalised propositions driven by Big Data insights. Our super-apps – VodaPay, Vodafone Cash and M-Pesa – combine our strengths in financial, digital and telecommunications services, and integrate different products and services from our partners.
As our strategy progresses, we are seeking to unlock economic growth across our markets by continuing to expand our financial products beyond basic transactions. This includes fostering a savings culture for customers and enabling access to capital markets as well as other services for SMEs to thrive. Solutions such as Tanzania’s wealth management product, M-Wekeza, provide customers with access to investment opportunities in the financial markets through a partner fund manager. M-Wekeza offers a savings account and personal investment platform, with features that differentiate it with comparable products. For example, it accepts the lowest minimum investment in the market, which starts at just TZS 1,000. Short-term digital lending solutions for individual customers and small businesses enable seamless completion of transactions and provide SMEs with convenient access to essential working capital. All these facilities are aimed at empowering our customers by easing their short-term financial challenges. This year Vodacom’s financial inclusion platforms continued to scale, accelerating access to digital financial services. We connected 92 million customers by 31 March 2026. Financial inclusion customers
We continued to empower SMEs in our markets through our financial products, which include insurance, invoice financing, lending, global payment partnerships and digital marketplaces. At the end of FY26, the number of financial inclusion customers increased to 92 million customers across our eight markets and the number of active merchants increased to 1.8 million (up 19% and 46% respectively). M-Pesa merchants and agents 2026 (million) 2025 (million) M-Pesa merchants 1 1.8 1.2 M-Pesa agents 2 0.8 0.7 Notes: 1. M‑Pesa merchants are registered businesses or individuals that accept customer payments via M‑Pesa for goods or services. 2. M‑Pesa agents are authorised intermediaries that provide cash‑in and cash‑out services. Looking forward Vodacom will continue to expand financial inclusion products for customers across all markets, as we work towards our target of 100 million financial inclusion customers by 2028.
Globally, nearly 80% of adults have a financial account, yet as of 2024 about 1.3 billion adults remain unbanked 1 . Among them, approximately 900 million have a mobile phone, including roughly 530 million with smartphones. Financial inclusion remains essential to reducing poverty, building resilience, and unlocking economic opportunities. Digital financial services (mobile money, mobile-enabled accounts) offer a powerful lever to extend affordable, safe, and convenient financial services to underserved
populations, especially in low-income economies. 92.1 million financial inclusion customers, including Safaricom 1.8 million M-Pesa merchants reached
Financial inclusion customers (million)
% of service revenue
% of penetration base
South Africa Tanzania Mozambique Egypt
4.5 – 14.1 40
–
63
14.7 9 34 6.4 26 75 7.9 23 56
Democratic Republic of the Congo Vodafone Group Lesotho
0.9
22 62
48.4 – – Safaricom (Kenya and Ethiopia) 43.7 44 86
Notes: 1. World Bank, 2025.
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