Safaricom’s Ziidi Trader Poised to Revolutionize Kenyan Stock Trading Through M-PESA Integration

Safaricom, Kenya’s telecommunications giant, is piloting a groundbreaking new feature called Ziidi Trader that could fundamentally transform how millions of Kenyans access and interact with the country’s capital markets. The innovative platform, currently in testing phase, will integrate stock trading on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) directly into the M-PESA app, potentially opening up the exclusive world of equity investment to the 34 million Kenyans who already use M-PESA for their daily financial transactions.

This move represents far more than just another feature addition to M-PESA’s already extensive suite of services. It signals Safaricom’s strategic evolution from a mobile money platform into a comprehensive financial ecosystem—one where users can send money, save, invest, borrow, insure, and now trade stocks, all from a single app that they access multiple times daily. For a country where financial inclusion has been revolutionized by mobile technology, Ziidi Trader could be the catalyst that brings equitable access to wealth creation through capital markets participation.

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The Massive Gap in Market Participation

The potential impact of Ziidi Trader becomes clear when examining the current state of retail investor participation on the NSE. Although Kenya has approximately 1.4 million registered investors on the exchange, only about 61,000 actively trade—representing a participation rate of merely 4.3%. This staggering disconnect between registration and active trading reveals a market that remains largely inaccessible to the average Kenyan despite registration numbers that appear impressive on paper.

The reasons for this participation gap are well-documented and systemic. High transaction costs imposed by traditional stockbrokers eat into potential returns, particularly for small retail investors making modest investments. The cumbersome account opening processes, which often require multiple in-person visits to broker offices with extensive documentation, create barriers that discourage busy Kenyans from completing the registration process. Perhaps most significantly, the requirement to route all trades through licensed brokers adds layers of complexity and cost that make stock market participation feel reserved for the wealthy and well-connected.

Safaricom’s approach with Ziidi Trader aims to eliminate these friction points entirely by embedding trading functionality within an app that Kenyans already trust and use daily. Rather than forcing potential investors to navigate an unfamiliar ecosystem of brokers, trading accounts, and complex platforms, Ziidi Trader meets users where they already are—in their M-PESA wallets.

Modern Trading Tools in a Familiar Interface

Early details revealed during the pilot phase indicate that Ziidi Trader will feature a sleek, dark-themed interface designed to feel modern and intuitive while remaining accessible to users with varying levels of financial sophistication. Screenshots from the pilot show a landing screen that describes the service as “Easy and Convenient,” emphasizing three core value propositions: M-PESA integration, valuable insights, and a platform designed to help users learn and grow their trading skills.

The platform will offer the same tools found in sophisticated trading applications used by professional investors globally. Users will be able to create personalized watchlists to track stocks of interest, set up real-time price alerts to notify them when stocks hit target prices, and access comprehensive portfolio tracking that shows performance over time. Dividend information will be prominently displayed, helping investors understand the total returns from their investments beyond just capital appreciation.

Crucially, all of these features will be accessible without ever leaving the M-PESA environment. Deposits and withdrawals will flow seamlessly to and from users’ M-PESA wallets, eliminating the need for separate bank accounts or the delays associated with traditional broker fund transfers. This integration represents a fundamental reimagining of how stock trading could work in a mobile-first, digitally-native African market.

Building on Ziidi’s Proven Success

Ziidi Trader is not Safaricom’s first venture into investment products—it’s the second major offering under the Ziidi investment brand, which the company has been aggressively building since late 2024. The first product, Ziidi Money Market Fund, launched publicly in January 2025 after receiving regulatory approval from the Capital Markets Authority in November 2024.

The money market fund’s reception exceeded even optimistic projections. Launched in partnership with Standard Investment Bank and ALA Capital Limited, the Ziidi MMF allows M-PESA customers to invest with as little as KES 100, earning competitive daily interest rates. By March 2025, just two months after public launch, the fund had attracted over 450,000 users and accumulated more than KES 7.5 billion in assets under management.

By June 2025, the fund’s growth trajectory had accelerated further. Assets under management reached KES 10.68 billion, generating investment income of KES 354.36 million for the half-year period. After deducting operating expenses including management fees, trustee fees, and custody fees totaling KES 81.28 million, the fund recorded a surplus of KES 273.08 million attributable to unit holders. These figures positioned Ziidi MMF firmly in the middle tier of Kenya’s money market funds landscape—an impressive achievement for a product less than six months old.

The rapid success of Ziidi MMF validated several important assumptions that underpin the Ziidi Trader strategy. First, it demonstrated that M-PESA users are eager for investment products when offered in accessible, low-friction formats. Second, it showed that users trust Safaricom with their investment capital, not just their payment transactions. Third, it proved that the economics of serving retail investors through mobile platforms can work at scale, even with small minimum investments that traditional fund managers would consider uneconomical.

The Contentious Origins: The Mali Saga

The Ziidi brand’s journey to prominence emerged from a complicated corporate dispute that offers important context for understanding Safaricom’s ambitions in the investment space. Genghis Capital had partnered with Safaricom since 2019 to pilot a money market fund product called Mali, which allowed M-PESA users to invest in money market instruments through their mobile wallets.

The Mali product showed promising traction during its pilot phase, validating the basic concept of mobile-delivered investment products for mass-market users. However, as the product matured and Safaricom sought to scale it broadly, disagreements emerged over control and strategic direction. Specifically, tensions arose when Safaricom expressed interest in bringing additional fund managers into the arrangement to expand product offerings and reduce concentration risk.

Genghis Capital, which had invested significant resources in developing the Mali product and platform, resisted this expansion of the partnership structure, viewing it as dilutive to its position and potentially undermining its competitive advantages. The dispute eventually led to a complete breakdown in the partnership, with Safaricom opting to launch its own branded investment products under the Ziidi name rather than continue with Mali under terms it found constraining.

This contentious history explains Safaricom’s determination to maintain control over the Ziidi platform architecture and partnership structures from the outset. By owning the brand, technology platform, and customer relationships directly, Safaricom ensures it can expand the product suite and add partners as it sees fit without the governance challenges that plagued the Mali collaboration.

M-PESA’s Unparalleled Reach and Influence

Understanding the potential impact of Ziidi Trader requires appreciating the scale and centrality of M-PESA in Kenyan economic life. Launched in March 2007, M-PESA recently celebrated its 18th anniversary as arguably the world’s most successful mobile money platform. As of December 2024, M-PESA had 34 million active users in Kenya alone, though Safaricom’s total customer base exceeds 62 million when counting all subscribers including those who use the network for voice and data without activating M-PESA.

The platform’s November 2025 half-year results revealed continued robust growth, with M-PESA adding 2.1 million new active users in just six months, representing 13.3% year-over-year growth. One-month active customers stood at 46.44 million across all markets, though Kenya remains by far the most mature and active M-PESA market.

M-PESA’s financial performance underscores its dominance. For Safaricom’s financial year 2025, M-PESA revenue grew 15.2% to KES 161.11 billion, accounting for more than 40% of total service revenue. In the half-year period ending September 2025, M-PESA contributed 45.4% of total service revenue, reaching KES 88.06 billion on the back of 14.0% year-over-year growth.

These aren’t just impressive numbers—they represent M-PESA’s integration into the daily fabric of Kenyan life. The platform processes more than 61 million transactions daily, making it Africa’s largest fintech provider by transaction volume. Over 648,000 merchants accept Lipa na M-PESA payments for goods and services. More than 300,000 agents facilitate cash-in and cash-out services across even the most remote areas of Kenya.

For many Kenyans, particularly those in rural areas or informal settlements, M-PESA functions as their primary—and often only—financial service provider. This ubiquity creates a unique opportunity for Ziidi Trader: it doesn’t need to convince millions of Kenyans to download a new app or create new accounts. The users are already there, already comfortable with digital financial transactions, already trusting Safaricom with their money.

Transforming M-PESA from Payments Platform to Financial Hub

Safaricom’s vision for M-PESA has always extended beyond simple money transfers, but the pace and scope of this transformation have accelerated dramatically in recent years. The platform has systematically added layers of financial services that progressively deepen user engagement and increase Safaricom’s role as a comprehensive financial services provider.

The expansion began with credit products. M-Shwari, launched in partnership with Commercial Bank of Africa (now NCBA), provided instant micro-loans to M-PESA users based on their transaction history. KCB M-PESA offered similar services through Kenya Commercial Bank. Fuliza, launched in 2019, provides overdraft facilities that allow users to complete M-PESA transactions even when their wallet balance is insufficient—essentially a line of credit integrated directly into the payment flow.

Savings products followed, with both M-Shwari and KCB M-PESA offering interest-bearing savings accounts accessible through M-PESA. Insurance came next, with Safaricom acquiring an insurance intermediary license and partnering with various insurance providers to offer products including health insurance, life insurance, and personal accident cover—all purchasable and manageable through M-PESA.

The wealth management category expanded significantly with the launch of Ziidi Money Market Fund, giving users access to investment returns that typically exceed bank deposit rates. Now, with Ziidi Trader, M-PESA will offer direct access to equity markets, completing the transformation into a full-service financial hub.

This systematic expansion follows a clear strategic logic: each new service leverages existing user trust and behavior patterns while creating new touchpoints for engagement. Credit products increase transaction frequency and average transaction values. Savings and investment products create stickiness by giving users reasons to keep larger balances in their M-PESA wallets. Insurance addresses life risks that could otherwise derail users’ financial stability.

The cumulative effect is powerful: M-PESA becomes not just a service users interact with for specific transactions, but a central organizing principle for their entire financial lives. When combined with Safaricom’s connectivity services and growing Super App ecosystem, this creates formidable competitive moats through network effects, switching costs, and data advantages.

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The Regulatory and Infrastructure Context

Ziidi Trader’s launch comes at a moment when Kenyan regulators and the NSE itself have been actively working to expand retail investor participation through various initiatives. In August 2025, the NSE implemented a transformative change to its trading rules, allowing investors to buy and sell shares one at a time rather than requiring minimum purchases of 100 shares.

This “single-unit trading” reform, approved by the Capital Markets Authority, dramatically lowered the entry barriers for small investors. Previously, someone wanting to invest in Safaricom stock trading at KES 28 per share would need to invest at least KES 2,800 plus transaction costs to buy the minimum 100 shares. Under the new rules, they can buy a single share for KES 28, making participation accessible to virtually any Kenyan with spare money to invest.

The NSE has also been working to modernize its trading infrastructure and reduce settlement times. In November 2025, the exchange announced plans to move to T+2 settlement (trade date plus two business days) from the previous T+3 cycle, bringing Kenya in line with global best practices and reducing the time investors must wait to receive their securities or cash after trades execute.

In October 2025, the NSE launched a dedicated Banking Sector Index to track the performance of Kenya’s 11 listed banks, providing investors with a specialized benchmark for one of the market’s most important sectors. This followed the NSE’s strategic plan for 2025-2029, which ambitiously targets increasing active retail investors from the current 61,000 to 9 million by 2029—a more than 140-fold increase.

These regulatory and infrastructure improvements create favorable conditions for Ziidi Trader’s launch. Single-unit trading means users can start with very small investments, matching the low-entry philosophy that made Ziidi MMF successful. Faster settlement times improve the user experience by reducing the lag between transaction and finality. The NSE’s explicit focus on retail investor growth signals regulatory receptiveness to innovations that expand market access.

Potential Impact on Market Liquidity and Dynamics

If Ziidi Trader successfully rolls out nationally following its pilot phase, the implications for the NSE could be profound. Consider the mathematics: if even 1% of M-PESA’s 34 million users in Kenya activated Ziidi Trader, that would add 340,000 active traders to a market that currently has only 61,000. If each of those new traders invested an average of just KES 5,000 (less than $40), it would inject KES 1.7 billion of new capital into the market.

More realistically, Ziidi Trader could follow adoption patterns similar to those seen with Ziidi MMF, which attracted 450,000 users within two months. If even a third of Ziidi MMF users also adopt Ziidi Trader, that would nearly triple the number of active traders on the NSE overnight.

Beyond the raw numbers, Ziidi Trader could change market dynamics in several important ways. Increased retail participation typically increases trading volumes and improves liquidity, particularly for mid-cap and small-cap stocks that currently trade infrequently. Higher liquidity generally leads to tighter bid-ask spreads and more efficient price discovery, benefiting all market participants.

The integration with M-PESA could also enable new patterns of investing behavior. Users might set up automated regular investments—dollar-cost averaging strategies that reduce timing risk and build positions systematically over time. The ease of transacting could reduce the home bias that currently keeps Kenyan savings in bank deposits rather than equities, as the friction to moving money between savings and investments would drop to nearly zero.

There are also potential concerns to monitor. A large influx of unsophisticated retail investors could increase market volatility if they trade based on rumors, social media hype, or emotional reactions to price movements. The ease of trading might encourage excessive trading that generates costs but not value. Market manipulation schemes could find more victims among inexperienced investors accessing markets through simplified interfaces.

However, Safaricom appears aware of these risks. The platform’s emphasis on education—with its tagline promising “a platform to learn and grow trading skills”—suggests attention to investor literacy. The provision of “valuable insights” could help users make more informed decisions. The integration of dividend information reminds users that stocks represent ownership in real businesses, not just price fluctuations to speculate on.

Competitive Implications and Market Disruption

Ziidi Trader’s entry into the market poses an existential threat to traditional stockbrokers and investment banks that have long dominated Kenya’s capital markets ecosystem. These established players typically charge commissions of 1.5% to 2% on trades, along with various fees for account maintenance, custody services, and other ancillary services. These fee structures made sense when brokers provided extensive research, advice, and relationship management to relatively wealthy clients making large trades.

But the economics change dramatically when the target market consists of millions of retail investors making small trades through mobile interfaces. Traditional broker cost structures—with expensive physical offices, large relationship management teams, and substantial regulatory overhead—cannot profitably serve customers who might invest KES 1,000 at a time. They need high-value clients making large trades to justify their cost base.

Safaricom’s cost structure is entirely different. The incremental cost of adding Ziidi Trader functionality to the existing M-PESA platform is relatively low once the initial development is complete. Customer acquisition costs are minimal because users are already in the M-PESA ecosystem. Customer service can leverage existing M-PESA support infrastructure. The platform can achieve profitability through volume—even with much lower per-trade margins than traditional brokers charge—because it serves such a massive base of users.

This dynamic mirrors disruptions seen in other markets where technology platforms have attacked financial services incumbents. In the United States, Robinhood decimated traditional brokerage commissions by offering zero-commission trading and a mobile-first interface targeting millennials. In India, Zerodha and other discount brokers captured market share by offering far lower costs than full-service brokers. In China, mobile trading apps integrated into payment platforms like Alipay and WeChat enabled massive retail participation in equity markets.

Traditional Kenyan brokers will need to respond strategically. Some may partner with Safaricom to provide execution, clearing, or advisory services for Ziidi Trader users. Others may focus on high-net-worth individuals and institutional clients where relationship value justifies premium pricing. Some may develop their own mobile-first offerings, though without M-PESA’s user base and integration advantages, competing directly with Ziidi Trader will be challenging.

Asset managers may initially benefit from Ziidi Trader if it directs flows into collective investment schemes they manage. But over time, as users become more sophisticated, they may shift from funds into direct stock ownership, putting pressure on fee-based fund management models.

The Broader Fintech and Super App Strategy

Ziidi Trader must be understood within Safaricom’s broader strategic evolution toward becoming what the company calls “Africa’s leading purpose-led technology company by 2030.” This vision extends well beyond telecommunications into a comprehensive digital ecosystem where connectivity, commerce, content, and financial services interweave to capture user time, attention, and wallet share.

The M-PESA Super App, launched across Safaricom’s markets in June 2021, introduced mini-apps that enable users to accomplish various tasks without downloading separate applications. Users can shop, access government services, pay bills, book travel, order food, access entertainment—all within the M-PESA environment. By fiscal year 2025, Safaricom reported that consumer Super App users grew 30% year-over-year, while active business app merchants doubled to 301,000.

This Super App strategy follows the playbook established by Chinese technology giants like Tencent (with WeChat) and Alibaba (with Alipay)—creating comprehensive digital ecosystems where users conduct increasing portions of their digital lives within a single, integrated environment. Network effects strengthen as more users and more services join the platform: each additional user makes the platform more valuable for merchants and service providers, while each additional service makes the platform more valuable for users.

Ziidi Trader fits naturally into this ecosystem strategy. A user might wake up, check stock prices in Ziidi Trader, order breakfast through M-PESA food delivery, pay for their commute with Lipa na M-PESA, conduct business transactions through Pochi la Biashara (merchant wallet), send money to family, pay utility bills, invest spare cash in Ziidi MMF, buy shares in Ziidi Trader, and access entertainment content—all without ever leaving the M-PESA Super App.

This integrated experience creates powerful switching costs. The more services a user activates within M-PESA, the more painful it would be to switch to a competitor—not because of contractual lock-ins, but because of the accumulated convenience, data, transaction history, and service integrations that would need to be replicated elsewhere.

For Safaricom, this integration provides invaluable data advantages. The company can observe users’ income flows (through M-PESA receipts), spending patterns (through payments and bill settlements), savings behavior (through Ziidi MMF), investment preferences (through Ziidi Trader), and borrowing needs (through credit products). This holistic view enables sophisticated risk assessment, personalized product recommendations, and targeted service delivery that competitors viewing only narrow slices of users’ financial lives cannot match.

Challenges and Open Questions

Despite its promising potential, Ziidi Trader faces several significant challenges that will determine whether it achieves transformative scale or merely becomes another feature with modest adoption.

Investor Education: Perhaps the most fundamental challenge is ensuring that new investors understand what they’re buying when they purchase stocks. Shares represent ownership in real businesses with fluctuating values, not guaranteed-return savings products like Ziidi MMF. Users need to understand concepts like risk, diversification, market volatility, and long-term investment horizons. If users treat Ziidi Trader like a casino, buying and selling based on short-term price movements or hot tips, they’ll likely lose money and become disillusioned with equity investing.

Market Volatility Management: The NSE, like all stock markets, experiences periods of significant volatility. New retail investors accessing markets through simplified mobile interfaces may panic and sell during downturns, locking in losses. Managing user expectations and encouraging long-term perspectives while allowing access to liquid markets presents a delicate balance.

Regulatory Compliance: Safaricom will need to comply with extensive securities regulations covering investor suitability assessments, disclosure requirements, anti-money laundering procedures, and investor protection rules. Doing so at massive scale through automated digital systems, while maintaining the simplicity that makes Ziidi Trader attractive, will be technically and operationally complex.

System Reliability: Stock markets operate on strict timing and precision. Trades must execute at specific prices, settlements must occur reliably, corporate actions like dividends must be processed correctly. Any significant system failures or errors affecting user accounts could severely damage trust and expose Safaricom to substantial liability.

Pricing and Monetization: Safaricom has not yet disclosed the fee structure for Ziidi Trader. If fees are too high, it will undermine the value proposition of accessibility. If fees are too low, it may not generate sufficient revenue to justify continued investment, particularly as infrastructure costs mount with scale. Finding the right balance—low enough to drive adoption, high enough to be profitable—will be crucial.

Competitive Response: Traditional brokers and emerging fintech competitors won’t sit idle as Safaricom seeks to capture market share. They may respond with their own innovations, aggressive pricing, or partnerships that leverage alternative distribution channels. Banks with mobile money offerings like Airtel Money and T-Kash may rush to develop competing platforms.

The Path Forward

For Ziidi Trader to realize its transformative potential, Safaricom will need to execute across multiple dimensions simultaneously. The pilot phase currently underway will provide crucial data on user behavior, technical performance, operational challenges, and demand patterns. Safaricom will need to iterate rapidly based on pilot learnings before committing to national rollout.

The national rollout itself, if and when it comes, will require extensive user communication to ensure M-PESA’s massive user base understands what Ziidi Trader offers and how to use it safely. Investor education will need to be ongoing and multi-channel—combining in-app tutorials, SMS tips, video content, agent training, and potentially partnerships with financial literacy organizations.

Building out customer support capabilities to handle stock trading queries at scale will be essential. M-PESA’s existing support infrastructure handles payment transaction issues; stock trading support requires entirely different expertise around order execution, settlement, corporate actions, and market rules. Safaricom will need to recruit, train, and deploy specialized support teams while maintaining the rapid response times users expect.

Technology infrastructure must scale to handle potentially millions of users checking prices and executing trades during market hours. The NSE’s trading systems will need to accommodate vastly higher message volumes and order flows without degrading performance. Safaricom’s existing technology prowess—evidenced by M-PESA’s ability to process 61 million transactions daily—provides a foundation, but stock trading presents different technical challenges around real-time execution, order matching, and settlement coordination.

Regulatory relationships will be crucial. Safaricom will need to work closely with the Capital Markets Authority to demonstrate that it can maintain the investor protection standards expected of capital markets participants while innovating on access and delivery methods. Building regulator confidence may require gradual scaling, extensive monitoring and reporting, and possibly pilot programs that test specific features before wider deployment.

Conclusion: A Potential Watershed Moment

If Ziidi Trader successfully navigates its pilot phase and achieves broad national adoption, it could represent a watershed moment not just for Kenya’s capital markets but for financial inclusion across Africa. The ability for tens of millions of mobile money users to seamlessly access equity investments through platforms they already use daily could fundamentally change the relationship between African citizens and capital markets.

For Kenya specifically, success would mean dramatic progress toward the NSE’s ambitious goal of reaching 9 million active investors by 2029. It would mean broader distribution of corporate wealth creation beyond just the elite few who have historically dominated capital markets participation. It would mean increased market liquidity that makes the NSE more attractive to both domestic and foreign companies seeking capital. And it would mean another chapter in Kenya’s remarkable fintech story—building on the M-PESA revolution that has already transformed how hundreds of millions of people manage money across Africa.

For Safaricom, Ziidi Trader represents the evolution of M-PESA from market-leading mobile money platform to comprehensive financial services ecosystem. Success would further entrench M-PESA’s centrality in Kenyan economic life, create new revenue streams from trading activity, deepen user engagement and switching costs, and position Safaricom as not just a telecommunications company but a transformative financial institution.

For African fintech and development more broadly, Ziidi Trader could provide a template for how mobile-first markets can leapfrog traditional capital markets infrastructure to deliver inclusive access to wealth-building tools. If Safaricom succeeds in Kenya, similar models could emerge across the continent, potentially enabling hundreds of millions of Africans to participate in equity ownership and wealth creation for the first time.

The path from pilot to transformative impact is long and uncertain. Many innovations that seem promising in controlled tests fail to achieve broad adoption or sustainable economics at scale. But the combination of M-PESA’s unparalleled reach, Safaricom’s execution capabilities, Kenya’s progressive regulatory environment, and the NSE’s commitment to expanding retail participation creates unusually favorable conditions for success.

As Ziidi Trader progresses from pilot to national rollout, financial services professionals, regulators, investors, and development practitioners across Africa and beyond will be watching closely. The outcome could influence how capital markets access is conceptualized and delivered across emerging markets for decades to come. For now, millions of Kenyans may soon discover that building wealth through stock market participation is as simple as the M-PESA transactions they already complete dozens of times each week—a potentially transformative development in a country where financial innovation continues to push boundaries and expand what’s possible.

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By: Montel Kamau

Serrari Financial Analyst

11th November, 2025