Safaricom wants M-PESA to become the place where Kenyans save and invest, not only where they send money. Chief executive Peter Ndegwa has set out a plan to push the platform deeper into savings, investing and insurance, and the products are already live: a money market fund, a share-trading service and, since October, a Shari'ah-compliant fund that starts at KSh100.
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In the year to March 2026, Safaricom's wealth products had 2.2 million active customers and KSh21.1 billion under management.
What M-PESA already offers investors
Safaricom has built the investment side one product at a time:
| Product | Launched | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Ziidi Money Market Fund | January 2025 | Low-risk fund for savings, from KSh100 |
| Ziidi Trader | February 2026 | Buy and sell Nairobi Securities Exchange shares in the M-PESA app |
| Ziidi Shari'ah | October 2026 | Money market fund with no interest-bearing assets, from KSh100, top-ups from KSh10 |
Ziidi Shari'ah is managed by Gulfcap Investment Bank with KCB Bank as trustee and is regulated by Kenya's Capital Markets Authority. It avoids interest-bearing instruments and sectors such as alcohol, gambling and tobacco, and Safaricom says the label describes how the money is invested, not who can use it. Customers reach it through the My OneApp app or by dialling *334#.
A money market fund pools small deposits and invests them in short-term, low-risk assets. Returns on the Ziidi funds accrue daily but are not fixed: they rise and fall with what the underlying investments earn, so they suit savings you may need soon rather than long-term growth. Ziidi Trader is different. Shares can fall as well as rise, and the price you sell at may be lower than what you paid.
The scale behind the push
The numbers explain why Safaricom is betting on wealth. In the year to March 2026, M-PESA processed 46.4 billion transactions worth KSh41.68 trillion, served 3.13 million merchants and earned KSh182.7 billion in revenue, up 13.4% and almost half of Safaricom's Kenyan service revenue.
Payments are maturing. Investing is where the next growth sits, and M-PESA already has what most investment apps spend years and millions trying to buy: tens of millions of trusted users with money in their wallets every day.
Ndegwa has described banks and insurers as "competitors, but they're also partners." That matters, because Safaricom does not run the funds itself. Licensed managers and trustees do, and M-PESA is the shop window.
More than investing
The wealth push sits alongside other changes to M-PESA:
- Merchant tools: a partnership with Pesapal for tap-to-pay and dynamic QR codes at tills, and overdraft for small traders using Pochi La Biashara.
- One app: My OneApp, launched in April 2026, combines M-PESA and Safaricom's customer app and will host mini-apps from other companies.
- Tax: talks with the Kenya Revenue Authority on using M-PESA for electronic tax invoices.
What it means for Nigeria
Nigeria's mobile money players are years behind. MTN's MoMo payment service bank had 3.2 million monthly active users on its new platform at the end of September, and Airtel Money Nigeria about 4.2 million customers. Under CBN rules, payment service banks can hold deposits and process payments but cannot lend, which limits how far they can copy M-PESA's model.
Nigerians do have investment apps: Bamboo, Risevest, Trove and, since 30 October, CredPal's Atom. But they are separate apps that users must download and fund. M-PESA's advantage is that the money is already there. The lesson for Nigerian fintechs and telcos is that the company holding people's daily transactions is best placed to sell them savings and investments.
What to watch
- Insurance: the part of Ndegwa's plan with the most still to build.
- Ziidi growth: whether 2.2 million wealth customers becomes a mass-market number in Safaricom's next annual results.
- My OneApp: whether third-party mini-apps turn M-PESA into a full financial marketplace.
M-PESA moved Kenya's money. Safaricom now wants it to grow that money, and its scale makes the plan hard to beat.
