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Tanzania’s leading telecoms company, Tigo, announced on Friday it has distributed Tshs 4.4 billion ($2.1 million) of its quarterly profit to Tigo Pesa users. Tigo Pesa is the company’s mobile money transfer service that has 4.6 million registered users.

According to the telecoms company’s Head of Finance and Risk for Mobile Financial Services, Obedi Laiser, the company has cumulatively paid its mobile money payment service users a total of $16.5 million (Tshs 35.5 billion) in quarterly payments since September 2014. This latest payment is the sixth time in a row that the company is distributing profit to users of its mobile money transfer service.

The payment is generated from profit accruing into the Tigo Pesa Trust Accounts held with major commercial banks in Tanzania, Laiser said. The company said it is the first telecom company in the world to share profit generated from its mobile money Trust Account in the form of a quarterly distribution to its customers.

“We are really excited to be announcing this profit share distribution for the seventh successive time” Laiser said in Dar es Salaam this week. “The payment underlines Tigo Tanzania’s commitment to provide financial access to our customers and to promote financial inclusion in the country through our Tigo Pesa services.”

Bank of Tanzania (BOT), Tanzanian central bank, aims to attain a 50% financial inclusion of the Tanzanian population by 2016. The East African country has an estimated population of 45 million people. The revenue distribution is in line with BOT regulation which allows the country’s mobile operators to increase e-money deposits and mobile money transactions through new loyalty schemes.  

Tigo Tanzania is a self-styled digital lifestyle brand, offering a diverse product portfolio in voice, SMS, high-speed internet and mobile financial services. Tigo has pioneered innovations such as Facebook in Kiswahili, TigoPesa App for Android and iOS users, Tigo Music (Deezer) and East Africa’s first cross-border mobile money transfer with currency conversion. The company also has the fastest and widest 4G network launched across Tanzania’s main cities last year.

Tigo is a brand of Millicom, an international telecoms and media company, operating its digital lifestyle brand across 12 countries in Africa and Latin America.