Today, marked the roll out of first ever M-Pesa financial journal M-Ledger powered by Safaricom. Subscibers can now get the M-Pesa transaction manager an android application that transforms your M-Pesa data into a meaningful financial information on your smartphone.

This is the first in an anticipated series of partnerships Safaricom will be pursuing with local developers and startups. The partnership is in Safaricom's continued support of the development and growth of relevant high potential mobile tech start-ups offering solutions to everyday problems in Kenya.

With the rapid growth in the use of M-PESA by organizations as a payments portal, M-Ledger will provide an easily accessible accounting service for users by allowing them to view and manage all their past transactions on a single view from their mobile phone.

M-Ledger was one of 18 applications developed during the inaugural 2013 Safaricom Appwiz Competition which is aimed at building and nurturing mobile tech startups that build innovative, relevant and attractive solutions for Kenyan consumers and enterprises.

Participants in the Competition were also provided with skills training in business planning, marketing, quality product development and financial management as part of the incubation period of the program.

The telecommunications company  launched the competition with the long-term intention of creating the foundation for a vibrant m-economy that is locally-driven.

This is how it works;

The app will scan all the received SMS messages sent by M-PESA for all your transactions and build a database from that information. M-ledger is currently only available for Android devices and has a host of useful features including:

  • Instant View of your Current M-PESA balance
  • Import up to 6 months of your M-PESA transactions into the app
  • Calculate M-PESA transaction costs
  • Recent Transactions
  • Total amount sent and received over time
  • Transactions per person
  • Total amount by type (pay bill, sent etc)
  • Top 20 ranking of recipients
  • Automatic Backup & Restore of your transactions
  • Various charts and graphs

The app is available from the Safaricom Appstore (http://appstore.safaricom.com)  to M-Pesa customers who use Android-based mobile phones. Safaricom is also looking to partner with other start-up firms and engage in more co-creation initiatives to come up with other solutions to boost the nascent mobile ICT industry.