THE STANDARD BUSINESS Waiver of M-Pesa transaction charges affected Safaricom profits. [Elvis Ogina, Standard] The free M-Pesa transactions for amounts below Sh1,000 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic last year weighed down on Safaricom’s overall earnings for the year ended 2020. The telco reported a 6.8 per cent drop in profit after tax of Sh68.7 billion for the year ended March 2021 from Sh73.7 billion in the previous period. During this period, Safaricom enabled Kenyans to reduce the impact of the pandemic by waiving fees for transactions below a Sh1,000, which saw free transactions worth Sh4.4 billion processed. Service revenue, mostly from voice and data, recorded a marginal decline of 0.3 per cent to close at Sh250.35 billion driven by double-digit growth in mobile data business, which grew by 11.5 per cent to Sh44.79 billion. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, some companies implemented work-from-home arrangements that helped boost Internet usage.