Safaricom wants M-Pesa to become the operating system of Kenya's digital economy, TechMoran reported. The company is adding investments, savings, insurance and business services to the mobile money platform. Chief Executive Peter Ndegwa set out the plan in an interview with CNN.
"We want to broaden and democratise access so you can either pay, you can save, you can invest, you can insure using M-PESA," Ndegwa said. For ordinary users, this means buying shares or insurance in the same app they use to send money. It also takes M-Pesa into areas long held by commercial banks, investment firms and insurers.
M-Pesa is already Safaricom's biggest earner. It made up 45.6% of Safaricom Kenya's service revenue in the financial year ended March 2026. The platform processed 46.4 billion transactions worth KSh 41.68 trillion that year, according to TechMoran. Transaction volumes grew 25.1%, and their value rose 8.9%.
One example of the push is Ziidi Trader. It lets customers buy and sell listed securities through the M-Pesa app from as little as US$1. Safaricom built it with the Nairobi Securities Exchange and Kestrel Capital. Assets under management in wealth products rose to KSh 21 billion from KSh 9.8 billion a year earlier. Active wealth customers reached 2.2 million.
Credit and business services are also growing. M-Pesa had 18 million credit customers, up 117.9%, according to the FY2026 investor presentation. The merchant network grew 81.5% to about 3.1 million merchants. Merchant revenue rose 35.8% to KSh 13.3 billion. Ndegwa said banks and insurers "are competitors, but they're also partners".
Safaricom is also bringing its services together in an AI-powered super app. The consumer app had 6.6 million active customers, up 40%. The business app had 458,900 active merchants. Ndegwa said AI is now central to fighting fraud. He said that fraud could not be prevented manually without AI and a data layer.
The strategy still depends on the network. Ndegwa said Safaricom invests US$400 million to US$500 million a year in Kenya, about half of it in network infrastructure. Data use is growing by about 30% a year. Coverage of 4G now reaches more than 95% of Kenyans, up from about 50% before the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is also considering satellite links for underserved areas.