Since its launch nearly 20 years ago, Safaricom’s M-PESA has revolutionised Kenya’s financial ecosystem. At the same time, the platform has increasingly assumed a lead role in driving the telco’s bottom line.

During the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026, M-PESA revenue in Kenya increased by 13.4 percent to close at KSh182.7 billion, bumping up the money transfer platform’s share of contribution in service earnings in the telco to 45.6 percent, up from 44.2 percent a year earlier.

This means that M-PESA now accounts for nearly half of everything Safaricom earns from a broad suite of services in Kenya. The share of M-PESA to Safaricom’s earnings has been on an upward trend having risen from 38.3 percent roughly four years ago.

According to the telco’s disclosures for FY2026, M-PESA continues to gain from an expanding ecosystem on account of higher consumer payments, peer-to-peer transfers and much more.

During the year under focus, M-PESA’s person to person money transfers and bill settlements increased by 18.4 percent to KSh74.55 billion, accounting for 53.6 percent of the platform’s jump in earnings.

Additionally, business payments, a broad segment that encompasses business-to-customer settlements, Lipa Na M-Pesa, and Pochi La Biashara, all increased at 16.5 percent to KSh56.67 billion to account for a 37.2 percent revenue growth during the period.

Safaricom disclosures show that the year experienced increased pace of adoption on M-PESA payments by merchants. Data shows that businesses on M-PESA payment platforms went up by 71 percent to 3.13 million, riding on Pochi La Biashara option which recorded 81.5 percent rise to 2.09 million till numbers at the end of the trading year. Additionally, the number of active Lipa Na M-PESA merchants soared by 54.2 percent to close at 1.04 million.

“The merchant base expanded by 71.0 percent to 3.1 million driven mainly by Pochi, which grew by 81.5 per cent to 2.1 million,” the results booklet noted. Pochi La Biashara, which allows informal business owners such as food vendors, kiosk operators, boda-boda riders and similar small-scale traders to separate business funds from personal money on their M-Pesa line, has become a quiet juggernaut in the telco’s stable.

Safaricom said the value of business payments on the M-PESA platform hit KSh17.1 trillion during the year, reflecting a 14.7 percent rise even as the payment volumes posted 24.1 percent jump to 15.2 billion deals. This analysis shows that Pochi La Biashara alone saw value of cash transacted post 86.8 percent growth to KSh365.6 billion even as the volume increases by 78 percent to 2.45 billion transactions.

During the year, innovation to drive Safaricom’s footprint in encouraging the savings culture in Kenya paid dividend with assets under management under the telco’s flagship savings platform Ziidi more than doubling to Ksh21 billion. Safaricom-backed Ziidi money market trader accounted for KSh18.7 billion of this wealth, which reflects more than double increase compared to the year ended March 2025.

December 2025 saw Safaricom launch Ziidi trader in alliance with the Nairobi Securities Exchange and Krestel Capital, expanding choice for traders who can now buy and sell securities via their smartphones.

“Zidi Trader is a mobile-based share-trading platform jointly offered by Safaricom, Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) and Kestrel Capital (EA) Limited… enabling customers to buy and sell NSE-listed shares and corporate bonds directly from their mobile phones,” the results booklet notes.

Ziidi Trader, which is regulated by the Capital Markets Authority, offers a fully digital entry point to Kenya’s capital markets for millions of retail investors in Kenya, who previously faced significant barriers to entry.

At the end of Safaricom’s FY2026, data shows there were 84,000 Zidi Trader subscribers on record and 511,000 opt-ins, signaling a strong start for the wealth management service.

Overall, during the year, total M-PESA transaction value increased by 8.9 percent to KSh41.68 trillion even as the transaction volumes surged by 25.1 percent to 46.41 billion. The faster growth in volumes relative to value reflects the expansion of lower-value, high-frequency transactions in the market, that is, micro-payments that deepen customer habit without necessarily driving fee income proportionally.

At the same time, chargeable transactions per active one-month customer posted 11.5 percent increase to 42.27, indicating that customers are not just using M-PESA more often, but using it in ways that generate revenue for the platform.

The M-Pesa Super App, which bundles payments, savings, lending, wealth and global payments into a single interface, has reached 21.99 million consumer app sign-ins, with 6.58 million active consumers. On the enterprise side, the Business App now serves over 458,900 active business customers.

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