Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa says M-PESA’s next phase is savings, investing and insurance

Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa says the next phase for M-PESA is turning it from a way to send money into a place where you can pay, save, invest and buy insurance. “We want to broaden and democratise access so you can either pay, you can save, you can invest, you can insure using M-PESA,” he said in a TV interview with Kenyan journalist Victoria Rubadiri.

Ndegwa has run Safaricom since 1st April 2020, and he’s the first Kenyan to hold the job. The interview looks back on those six and a half years, from the launch in Ethiopia to his aim of making Safaricom “Africa’s leading purpose-led technology company”. He also gives two numbers: about 150 million M-PESA transactions a day, and USD 400 million to USD 500 million a year spent on Safaricom’s Kenyan network. That’s about KES 52 billion to KES 65 billion.

So does anything change for you? Not yet. The release on the interview names no new product, price or date. What Ndegwa describes is mostly a bigger version of what’s already inside M-PESA.

You can already save on M-PESA through M-Shwari and KCB M-PESA, and you can invest from as little as KES 100 in the Ziidi money market fund, a fund that puts your money in short-term, low-risk investments and pays interest daily. Ziidi Trader, which Safaricom runs with the Nairobi Securities Exchange and the stockbroker Kestrel Capital, lets you buy and sell NSE shares from your phone. By March 2026, Safaricom’s savings and investment products held KES 21.0 billion for 2.2 million active customers, up from 600,000 customers a year earlier. We looked at how fast that money was growing when Ziidi neared KES 20 billion in June.

Insurance is the thinnest of the four. Safaricom Insurance Agency started selling cover in August 2024, and Safaricom’s own fact sheet describes that cover as built into phones sold through its shops, plus home insurance as an add-on for Home Fibre customers. So when Ndegwa says “insure using M-PESA”, that’s the part with the most left to build.

Ndegwa calls banks and insurers “competitors, but they’re also partners”, and M-PESA’s product list shows what he means. Many of its money products have a bank behind them. Fuliza, the overdraft that lets a payment go through when your balance is short, is offered with KCB and NCBA. KCB M-PESA is KCB’s. The short-term loans for Pochi La Biashara and till owners come through Sidian Bank and Diamond Trust Bank, each working with a lending fintech. So the banks are rivals for your savings and, at the same time, the lenders behind Fuliza and M-PESA’s business loans.

Safaricom’s own published figures come out lower than Ndegwa’s 150 million. In the year to March 2026, M-PESA handled 46.4 billion transactions, which averages out to about 127 million a day. That count was up 25.1% on the year before, and 17.1 billion of those transactions were free small payments under the Kadogo tariff. If volumes kept growing at anything like that rate after March, a daily figure near 150 million by October is plausible. That’s our arithmetic; Safaricom hasn’t published a figure for October.

Volume is also why Ndegwa says fraud checks need AI. “We can’t manually be able to prevent fraud if we didn’t have AI and we have a data layer,” he said. At 127 million transactions a day, M-PESA averages about 1,500 transactions every second. No team of people can look at that many, so the fraud checks on your transfers are done by software. Safaricom says it has more than 70 AI models in production, including ones built to spot fraud and money laundering, and fraud prevention is built into Fintech 2.0, the platform it moved M-PESA onto in 2025. That platform can handle 6,000 transactions a second.

Safaricom spent KES 55.8 billion on capital projects in Kenya in the year to March 2026, about USD 430 million, and KES 52.1 billion the year before. Of the latest figure, KES 38.6 billion went into the network itself and KES 16.4 billion into IT systems. So USD 400 million to USD 500 million a year describes the spending Safaricom already reports. Safaricom says its 4G network now covers 97.9% of Kenya’s population and its 5G network 30%.

Ndegwa also talks up the “one app”, Safaricom’s super app that puts M-PESA, airtime, data and Home Fibre in one place. That’s My OneApp, which replaced the M-PESA app on 1st April 2026. Its launch was rough: logins failed, customers abroad were locked out, and Safaricom apologised publicly on 15th April. Ndegwa now says AI will be used to personalise the app for each user.

The release promoting the interview doesn’t mention the court fight over who owns Safaricom. In June the government sold 15% of the company to Vodafone Kenya, owned by South Africa’s Vodacom, taking Vodacom’s stake to 55%. At the end of July, shareholders voted to let Vodacom name the shortlist for Safaricom’s next CEO. In September, the High Court declared the sale null and void, and the government has appealed.

For M-PESA users, the interview sets out a plan with no launch dates attached. The spending figure matches what Safaricom already reports, and the 150 million figure fits the growth in its last annual results. Safaricom’s half-year results for April to September will show how far daily volumes have climbed since March.

Join on Telegram Local Forecaster If it’s happening in Africa, if it’s happening in Kenya. Business. Agriculture. Banking. Send over your tips and stories to mail@tech-ish.com.Related Articles Safaricom officially launches Family Share: Home Fibre plus minutes or data for up to five phones from KES 3,749October 26, 2026 Family Share on Safaricom Home Fibre now offers minutes or data for five peopleOctober 21, 2026 With M-PESA Jumbe, shop owners can leave with their phones and staff can still confirm paymentsOctober 19, 2026 Safaricom Home Fibre customers in Embakasi got their questions answered at an estate clinicOctober 8, 2026 Why you may now get two M-PESA SMS after paying at a TillOctober 6, 2026 Telcos must send government emergency texts to all phone users, even those who opted outOctober 5, 2026 //Join the discussion 0 comments KM posting as Korongo Mrefu add name or email Both optional and your call. A name credits you publicly; an email only shows your Gravatar photo — it's never displayed and we never email you. Leave both blank to stay fully anonymous.

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