Vodacom is pushing closer to its goal of earning almost a third of its service revenue from nontraditional sources such as financial services.
For the past decade, South Africa’s mobile operators ― with their international counterparts ― have been working to mitigate the ongoing decline in high-margin voice and SMS revenue, due to rising internet usage, by exploring other areas of business.
In the case of South Africa’s largest mobile provider these lines of business, dubbed “beyond mobile”, include financial services, fixed, digital, and internet of things (IoT). In all instances, Vodacom is looking to capitalise on internet use beyond the data revenue received for such activity.
This week, Vodacom boss Shameel Joosub said, “Beyond mobile is no longer a strategic aspiration; it’s a commercial reality and it’s scaling.”
For the year to end-March, beyond mobile services generated R29.8bn, contributing 22.3% of group service revenue.
“This reflects steady progress towards our ambition of 30% by 2030,” said Joosub.
The aim, under the group’s Vision 2030 strategy ― debuted in early 2025 ― included growing the customer base to 260-million and financial services customers to 120-million.
The contribution of beyond mobile reached 21.4% of the company’s service revenue in the 2025 financial year, translating to R25.83bn for the period.
Joosub said financial services remain a core pillar of the group’s growth strategy. Financial services customers increased by 17.4% to 103-million, including Safaricom, supported by growth across payments, insurance, savings, lending and merchant services.
“Reflecting the strength of this momentum and the scale of opportunity ahead we have upgraded our Vision 2030 ambition for financial services customers to 130-million from 120-million previously,” he said.
“Our leadership in African fintech remains evident by the scale of transaction value we process, which reached $525.6bn in the year, up 16.6%.”
The group has also increased its customer ambition to 275-million.
Across metrics, Vodacom’s strategy is being helped by its recent deal activity and geographic expansion.
“The two milestone transactions, Safaricom and Maziv, are expected to materially enhance the group’s beyond mobile positioning,” said Joosub.
After a four-year battle, Vodacom completed the R13bn merger of its fibre business with that of Remgro’s Maziv at end-2025. Shortly afterwards, the group announced it would be taking control of East Africa’s largest mobile provider, Safaricom.
The deal also gives the JSE-listed group control of Africa’s largest mobile payments, M-Pesa.
“The group’s fibre footprint will extend to 3.6-million homes passed, strengthening our connectivity leadership and long-term growth potential when the Safaricom transaction completes,” said Joosub.
In South Africa, beyond mobile contributed R12bn, or 18.7% of service revenue, “supported by fixed and financial services”.
Fixed service revenue was up 8.1%, excluding low-margin wholesale transit revenue. Homes and businesses connected reached 233,000, boosted by good growth in the prepaid segment.
Service revenue from financial services was up 8.1% to R3.7bn, driven by the company’s insurance business, merchant services and lending activities.
The company now has 3-million insurance policies spanning across contract, device, funeral and life cover.
The company said its fintech superapp VodaPay is “an important channel for our seasonal campaign and continued to gain customer traction”. - Business Day