Safaricom's net profit for the last 6 months through to September 2016 increased to Sh23.93 billion from Sh18.08 billion in the same period last year, the company announced on Friday.

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Kenya’s biggest telcom company attributed the 32.35 percent growth to increased revenues from non-voice services, most notably from M-Pesa and data.

Safaricom’s Chief Executive Officer Bob Collymore said the performance was due to increased use of non-voice services which accounts for 52.3 percent of its total income.

Total revenues rose to 5.02 percent to Sh102.1 billion from Sh197.22 billion a year earlier.

Voice services is still the single largest source of income at Sh45.77 billion in the 6 months, although at the slowest pace of 1.1 percent compared with last year's Sh45.19 billion.

M-Pesa services gathered Sh25.87 billion, a 33.7 percent growth over Sh19.35 billion it posted 12 months ago.

Income from data services registered the largest growth at 46.3 percent to Sh13.40 billion.

Earnings from short messaging services (SMS) grew to 8.1 percent to Sh8.63 billion, the firm's 40 per cent shares is owned by UK's Vodafone .

Direct costs increased 8.3 per cent to Sh32.50 billion.

Safaricom had scrapped M-Pesa transactions to below Sh100, mostly Lipa Na M-Pesa and person to person transactions.