What was the total revenue generated by Vodacom South Africa's financial and digital services in the first half of 2019
 This is a land grab moment in which we can capture meaningful WAN market share by offering customers superior products at a substantial discount to incumbent legacy product pricing. As a recognized leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SD-WAN, I'm very encouraged by the building contract pipeline and excited about the long-term growth prospects.
Secondly, we continue to expand our leading global IoT platform. We recently announced with America Movil for Latin America a new deal which completes global footprint. This is already a circa EUR800 million business for the Group. And as the right chart shows, we're growing connection strongly across the key industry verticals, which we believe have the most potential. The next stage in the journey is to scale our platform and expand its features, while moving up the value chain from connectivity to complete solutions and data analytics as we have done successfully in automotive.
Finally, our Emerging Consumer segment contributed just under 20% of revenues in the first half, and it's growing strongly. We've discussed the data penetration and smartphone adoption opportunity several times. So today I would like to focus on the additional products where we see the potential for another wave of growth. M-Pesa has become Africa's leading payments platform, with 39 million customers processing 5.8 billion transactions in the first half, a platform that is significantly larger than any African Bank and already a EUR1 billion revenue generator for us.
M-Pesa is now moving beyond its origins as a mobile transfer service and is providing enterprise payments, financial services and mobile commerce. As smartphone penetration grows, we will take the opportunity to expand and develop the functionality on the platform, supporting additional growth opportunities in our countries and potentially other sub-Saharan Africa countries. Although we are at a much earlier stage, Vodacom South Africa is also succeeding in financial and digital services, leveraging its leading market position to sell insurance and digital entertainment. We saw financial services revenue grow 37% in H1.
So, to summarize, the consistency of our commercial performance is improving and we have returned to top line growth with Europe tracking to plan and Rest of World ahead of plan. We are more than halfway toward our three year EUR1.2 billion net OpEx reduction target, supported by strong momentum in digital, underpinning our ambition to continue to expand EBITDA margins. And we have made a fast start on the Liberty integration, building high confidence in achieving our synergy plans. All this gives us confidence that we will build on our first half performance and see both service revenue and EBITDA growth improve in H2, underpinning our new financial guidance.
Strategically, we are making good progress on improving asset utilization, with mobile network sharing deals secured in five markets, active discussions in Germany and a reciprocal wholesale deal with Virgin in the UK. We are also actively working to monetize our tower assets over the coming 15 months, unlocking significant value for our shareholders.
And on that, Margherita, do you want to join me?
Questions and Answers:
Nick Read -- Chief Executive Officer
Now, I've been told it's one question only. And you have to use the mics because otherwise I don't think you get heard. So you're first, sir.
Akhil Dattani -- JPMorgan -- Analyst
Okay. Thanks. It's Akhil from JPMorgan. Can I maybe start with the broader commercial strategy? I guess good KPIs, but obviously one of the announcements we've had in the last week or so is an MVNO announcement in the UK. Maybe if you could just expand on the decision making behind that and what you feel led to that when Liberty yesterday was alluding to a more aggressive price point versus what BT had been offering? And I guess more broadly, you've talked about your digital channels and how you're going to use that to target the low end. How do you think about the MVNO strategy outside of the UK? So can we extrapolate anything from t
 This is a land grab moment in which we can capture meaningful WAN market share by offering customers superior products at a substantial discount to incumbent legacy product pricing. As a recognized leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SD-WAN, I'm very encouraged by the building contract pipeline and excited about the long-term growth prospects.
Secondly, we continue to expand our leading global IoT platform. We recently announced with America Movil for Latin America a new deal which completes global footprint. This is already a circa EUR800 million business for the Group. And as the right chart shows, we're growing connection strongly across the key industry verticals, which we believe have the most potential. The next stage in the journey is to scale our platform and expand its features, while moving up the value chain from connectivity to complete solutions and data analytics as we have done successfully in automotive.
Finally, our Emerging Consumer segment contributed just under 20% of revenues in the first half, and it's growing strongly. We've discussed the data penetration and smartphone adoption opportunity several times. So today I would like to focus on the additional products where we see the potential for another wave of growth. M-Pesa has become Africa's leading payments platform, with 39 million customers processing 5.8 billion transactions in the first half, a platform that is significantly larger than any African Bank and already a EUR1 billion revenue generator for us.
M-Pesa is now moving beyond its origins as a mobile transfer service and is providing enterprise payments, financial services and mobile commerce. As smartphone penetration grows, we will take the opportunity to expand and develop the functionality on the platform, supporting additional growth opportunities in our countries and potentially other sub-Saharan Africa countries. Although we are at a much earlier stage, Vodacom South Africa is also succeeding in financial and digital services, leveraging its leading market position to sell insurance and digital entertainment. We saw financial services revenue grow 37% in H1.
 So, to summarize, the consistency of our commercial performance is improving and we have returned to top line growth with Europe tracking to plan and Rest of World ahead of plan. We are more than halfway toward our three year EUR1.2 billion net OpEx reduction target, supported by strong momentum in digital, underpinning our ambition to continue to expand EBITDA margins. And we have made a fast start on the Liberty integration, building high confidence in achieving our synergy plans. All this gives us confidence that we will build on our first half performance and see both service revenue and EBITDA growth improve in H2, underpinning our new financial guidance.
Strategically, we are making good progress on improving asset utilization, with mobile network sharing deals secured in five markets, active discussions in Germany and a reciprocal wholesale deal with Virgin in the UK. We are also actively working to monetize our tower assets over the coming 15 months, unlocking significant value for our shareholders.
And on that, Margherita, do you want to join me?
Questions and Answers:
Nick Read -- Chief Executive Officer
Now, I've been told it's one question only. And you have to use the mics because otherwise I don't think you get heard. So you're first, sir.
Akhil Dattani -- JPMorgan -- Analyst
Okay. Thanks. It's Akhil from JPMorgan. Can I maybe start with the broader commercial strategy? I guess good KPIs, but obviously one of the announcements we've had in the last week or so is an MVNO announcement in the UK. Maybe if you could just expand on the decision making behind that and what you feel led to that when Liberty yesterday was alluding to a more aggressive price point versus what BT had been offering? And I guess more broadly, you've talked about your digital channels and how you're going to use that to target the low end. How do you think about the MVNO strategy outside of the UK? So can we extrapolate anything from t