Safaricom wants M-Pesa to become a bigger financial services platform under Boniface Mungania

Safaricom is building a financial services business that reaches well beyond mobile money transfers, with merchant financing, investment products, insurance and business management tools becoming part of the M-Pesa ecosystem.

The expansion gives Boniface Mungania, the company’s Chief Financial Services Officer, responsibility for a portfolio whose growth will depend on how effectively Safaricom converts its payments network into a distribution platform for other financial products.

The scale of that operation is already visible in Safaricom’s half-year results for the six months ended September 30, 2026. The company reported KSh7.1 billion in financial services revenue, an increase of 55.3%, alongside 17.5 million credit customers and 3.4 million money market fund customers. It also reported 67,500 insurance policies issued, representing growth of 852.2%.

These figures describe a business with several established revenue and customer segments rather than a payments operation looking for its first adjacent market. M-Pesa itself generated KSh100.1 billion, equivalent to 42.8% of Safaricom’s total revenue during the period.

The distinction between the two revenue categories is important. M-Pesa’s transaction business remains the dominant contributor, while the financial services portfolio provides additional activities through which Safaricom can earn revenue and deepen customer engagement.

Mungania took over the financial services division after Esther Masese Waititu left the company in July 2026. He became interim head in August, with his substantive appointment taking effect on November 1 following regulatory approvals. His previous responsibilities included M-Pesa business development, product development, payments and public sector digital transformation.

Safaricom’s payment strategy is already moving towards higher transaction volumes rather than maximising charges on every payment.

During the first half of FY2027, M-Pesa processed 12.9 billion chargeable transactions, representing growth of 48.2%. Revenue increased by 13.6% to KSh100.1 billion, a slower rate than transaction growth. Safaricom attributed part of this difference to its decision to reduce the cost of certain transactions to encourage greater usage.

The company reported that 63% of consumer payment transaction volumes were zero-rated. Approximately 81% of Lipa na M-Pesa and Pochi la Biashara merchant transactions were also free.

Monthly chargeable transactions per customer rose from approximately 13 to 13.5 in 2020 to 51, according to the company’s reported figures.

The commercial logic is to encourage customers and businesses to conduct more of their daily financial activities through M-Pesa. A larger volume of affordable transactions can support other services, including credit, merchant solutions, savings and insurance distribution.

This approach also helps explain Mungania’s description of M-Pesa as a Techfin rather than a conventional fintech product. He sees the service as a technology platform that enables financial services, rather than a financial services operation that subsequently adopted technology.

He does not expect M-Pesa to replace banks and insurance companies. Instead, he envisages financial institutions connecting their products to the platform and using its distribution capabilities to reach customers.

The distinction has commercial implications for Safaricom. It can expand its financial services offering through partnerships without necessarily assuming responsibility for every underlying financial product.

Mungania’s emphasis on transaction data also fits this model. He cites Fuliza as an example of a product developed after Safaricom identified customers whose M-Pesa transactions failed because their wallets lacked sufficient balances.

The company used the observed behaviour to develop an overdraft service. Fuliza facilitated KSh1.15 trillion in lending during the six months to September 2026, according to the original interview.

For Mungania, the value of such products extends beyond the revenue they generate. He told Business Daily that an overdraft enabling a trader to increase sales represents a more meaningful outcome than the financial performance of the platform alone.

Small businesses provide one of the clearest opportunities for Safaricom to extend M-Pesa’s role.

The company reported 4.5 million merchants during the first half of FY2027, representing growth of 90.3%. Pochi la Biashara accounted for 3.2 million customers, while Lipa na M-Pesa had 1.3 million merchants.

Merchant transactions reached 4.7 billion, increasing by 52.6%, while merchant revenue grew 34.6% to KSh8.18 billion.

Safaricom’s plans for this segment go beyond providing businesses with a way to collect payments. Its merchant strategy includes credit, reconciliation, invoicing and business administration tools that could give traders more ways to manage their operations through the platform.

Pochi la Biashara illustrates the reasoning behind this expansion. Before its introduction, some merchants relied on ordinary peer-to-peer M-Pesa transfers to receive business payments. Safaricom identified that these transactions were mixing business receipts with personal payments.

The dedicated merchant product gave businesses a way to separate the two activities.

Safaricom is now extending that proposition through lending. In October 2026, the company extended Fuliza overdrafts to Pochi la Biashara users, bringing short-term credit closer to merchants who already receive payments through M-Pesa.

The proposed integration with the Kenya Revenue Authority provides another indication of where merchant services could go. In October, TechTrendsKE reported discussions between Safaricom and KRA over an arrangement that would allow electronic tax invoices to be generated on behalf of merchants receiving payments through M-Pesa.

The proposal involved reverse invoicing, with invoices potentially transmitted to KRA at the end of the day. It was still under discussion in the reporting and should not be confused with an operational service.

Safaricom has also been working on the payment acceptance side. Its October partnership with Pesapal introduced NFC tap-to-pay and dynamic QR payment capabilities at merchant tills. The company announced an ambition to expand Scan-to-Pay acceptance from more than 60,000 outlets to 500,000 within 12 months.

Together, these developments show how merchant payments can provide an entry point into a wider range of business services. A merchant who uses M-Pesa to collect money could also access financing, pay suppliers, reconcile transactions and manage business records through connected services.

For Safaricom, the opportunity lies in becoming more deeply embedded in the daily operations of small businesses, rather than relying exclusively on the fees generated when customers send and receive money.

The expansion of digital credit presents a different set of responsibilities for the financial services division.

Fuliza has demonstrated how transaction patterns can help Safaricom identify demand for short-term borrowing. However, the company’s merchant lending experience also shows why loan disbursements and customer numbers cannot serve as the only measures of performance.

TechTrendsKE reported in October that Safaricom’s Taasi Till merchant credit portfolio had recorded an 8% non-performing loan ratio. The company acknowledged challenges associated with digital credit, including financial stress and over-indebtedness.

Its stated response includes tighter exposure controls, behavioural scorecards and more purpose-led credit. Safaricom also uses data-driven and AI-enabled models, with human oversight, to assess customer eligibility, affordability and risk.

The company reported that the number of customers eligible to borrow through Fuliza had risen to 18.1 million in the year to March 2026, from seven million a year earlier.

That figure refers to eligible borrowers, not necessarily customers who actively borrowed during the reporting period.

The lending portfolio therefore presents Mungania with two connected priorities: extending access to credit while maintaining the quality of the loans being issued.

A product that allows a merchant to borrow against expected business activity can support working capital needs. But if the lending model does not adequately assess repayment capacity, the same transaction data used to identify opportunities can expose the company to deteriorating loan performance.

This becomes particularly relevant as Safaricom extends credit beyond individual consumers into businesses with different cash-flow patterns and operating requirements.

The financial services division will need to balance the commercial opportunity in a large customer base against the cost of defaults and the consequences of lending beyond customers’ ability to repay.

Safaricom has also established a growing presence in savings and investments through its Ziidi platform.

The company reported KSh25.6 billion in Ziidi assets under management during the first half of FY2027, alongside 3.4 million money market fund customers.

Its investment offering has expanded beyond the original money market fund. Ziidi Trader, introduced in February 2026, allows customers to buy and sell shares listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.

In October, Safaricom introduced Ziidi Shari’ah with Gulfcap Investment Bank. The Sharia-compliant money market fund allows customers to begin investing with KSh100 and make subsequent contributions from KSh10.

These products extend M-Pesa’s role from facilitating payments to providing access to investment services through a mobile distribution channel.

Safaricom’s wealth management business had reported KSh21.1 billion in assets under management in FY2026, according to its October reporting. The KSh25.6 billion Ziidi figure reported for the first half of FY2027 provides a more recent measure of the platform’s investment activity.

Insurance is another part of the portfolio. Safaricom reported 67,500 policies issued during the first half of FY2027, an 852.2% increase.

The company can use M-Pesa’s customer reach to distribute products developed with specialist financial institutions, reducing the need for customers to interact with multiple separate channels to access financial services.

Mungania’s previous work in M-Pesa product development and business development gives him experience with the commercial relationships and technology infrastructure supporting this model.

Mungania’s career at Safaricom began in 2007 as a customer care representative. He joined after graduating in biochemistry from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and spending six months working as a medical sales representative.

His subsequent assignments included M-Pesa business development and product development. Former Safaricom chief executive Bob Collymore later recommended him for a consultancy with Vodafone in Qatar, where he worked on mobile money solutions targeting diaspora remittances to home countries.

He subsequently returned to Nairobi and took up other responsibilities within Safaricom, including Payments Tribe Lead and Director of Public Sector Digital Transformation. His work in the latter position earned him the Order of the Grand Warrior (OGW) award.

He succeeds Waititu, who became closely associated with M-Pesa’s development during her tenure and was widely known as Mama M-Pesa.

The responsibilities facing her successor extend across several businesses whose performance depends on different commercial and operational factors. Payments require affordable and reliable infrastructure, merchant services depend on sustained business engagement, lending requires effective risk assessment, while investment and insurance products rely on distribution arrangements with specialist institutions.

Safaricom’s My OneApp adds another layer to this strategy. The application combines services previously available through separate M-Pesa and MySafaricom applications, bringing payments, connectivity, savings, investments, credit and insurance into one digital environment.

The company reported 4.5 million monthly active users, 7.3 million downloads and KSh2 trillion in transactions processed through the application. It has also introduced AI-powered recommendations, which Safaricom said reached 17.7 million customers monthly.

For Mungania, the challenge is to make the different financial services work as a connected offering while preserving the reliability and customer confidence that have supported M-Pesa’s position in the market.

He has said that financial products should be judged by their effect on customers, citing the example of an overdraft helping a trader increase sales.

That approach places the performance of Safaricom’s financial services business beyond the volume of transactions, loans or policies issued. Its commercial success will also depend on whether customers and businesses continue to find practical value in the products distributed through M-Pesa.

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