Vodafone India’s mobile payment service M-Pesa has around 0.37 million active users for the quarter ended September 30, 2014, registering a modest 23% growth from 0.3 million users in the previous quarter. In terms of registered users, M-Pesa claims to have 2.1 million registered users for the quarter as against 1.5 million registered users in the previous quarter and 1.2 million registered users in the quarter before. The company also mentions that the service is now available through 79,000 sales agents, up from 66,000 in the previous quarter and 60,000 sales agents in the quarter before. Note that Vodafone had completed the pan-India rollout of M-Pesa in March this year, about one year since its India launch and about 16 months after the initial announcement. M-Pesa Bharat BPO tie-up In September this year, Vodafone India had signed a strategic partnership with Bharat BPO, a Spice Digital* group company to integrate M-Pesa as one of the payment options for Bharat BPO’s SMS railway ticket booking service. Following this partnership, Vodafone M-Pesa customers could send in their booking details either via SMS or through the 139 Railways Reservation app on Android or Java and enter their ‘M-PIN’ to authorize the transaction. More on that here. Other Players Other players in this segment include Airtel Money that had reported an active base of 1.7 million for Q4-FY14, but has stopped providing data related to its India business ever since. Idea Cellular's mobile money service Idea Money also went live in July this year. The service is currently live in Mumbai with plans to extend this service to other cities…
