Money loves circulation. It thrives when it’s put to work, not when it’s left to gather dust in a bank account—or worse, idle in a mobile wallet. That’s why financial gurus always say: Don’t let your money work for you.

For years, Kenyans stashed cash in M-PESA, a digital wallet that revolutionized payments but wasn’t designed to grow wealth. Meanwhile, traditional investment options —like Money Market Funds— required jumping through hoops: paperwork, hefty minimum deposits, and the ever daunting task of picking the right fund manager.

“You have to fill out a form, you have to know which stockbroker to go to, which fund manager to go to, and usually, the investment size you start with is quite high,” explained Aliya Khanbai, head of Wealth and Insurance Services at Safaricom. The barriers were real, and they kept everyday Kenyans from building wealth effortlessly.

Enter Ziidi. Launched in late 2024 and officially unveiled in March 2025 — coinciding with M-PESA’s 18th anniversary— Ziidi is modelled to shatter the old rules on growing wealth.

It is designed to eliminate mountains of paperwork and those intimidating minimum deposits. For just KES100, a mobile phone, and three taps on the M-PESA Super App, one is able to start their investment journey.

“Our aim was to democratize savings and investment,” said Aliya. “That means making investment accessible to Kenyans, and the only way we could do that was to bring down that accessibility and make it easy.”

Behind the scenes, Esther Waititu, Safaricom’s Chief of Financial Services, and her team studied human behaviour. They established that if investing felt natural, people would do it. 

Now, with Ziidi, every Kenyan — from a student with spare change to a market trader saving for the future — could put their money to work. No gatekeepers. No jargon. Just opportunity and wealth, unlocked.

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