Kenya’s mobile money market is booming. In 2025, the country added 9 million mobile subscriptions, pushing the total to 51.36 million. This means that 3 in every 4 Kenyans now use mobile money.
The country’s mobile money penetration now stands at 98%; at nearly full capacity, the competition is no longer to get more Kenyans to use mobile money. The next fight between operators will be the first to provide vertical integration that locks in customers.
The pricing war: Airtel Money, the country’s second-largest mobile money operator (MMO), has spent the last few years pulling a classic challenger move of lower fees, free transfers, and wider agent distribution to win over users from its largest competitor, M-PESA.
That strategy has worked; M-PESA’s dominant market share has since slipped from 95% in 2023 to below 90% in 2025, while Airtel Money has climbed into double digits.
But the room to compete on price is shrinking. Regulators are stepping in to force fees down across the industry, with plans to cut average transaction costs from about KES 23 ($0.18) to KES 10 ($0.077). If these prices eventually reduce, MMOs will be forced to price reasonably; it might also dull the low-price edge that operators, such as Airtel Money, previously relied on.
Safaricom, on its part, is betting that the next phase of competition will not be won on price, but on depth. Instead of matching Airtel fee for fees, it is building a closed-loop ecosystem by expanding what M-PESA can do by layering in savings, credit, investment products, and merchant tools to make the wallet harder to leave.
In a market where almost every Kenyan has been onboarded, the real winner will be the operator that users rely on the most, and that’s what Safaricom is trying to achieve.
