Safaricom’s Ziidi Money Market Fund (MMF) has posted a profit after tax of Sh784.2 million for its first 14 months of operation ending December 31, 2025 — a remarkable result for a product that only opened to the public in late 2024. The fund generated approximately Sh1 billion in investment income from Sh14.7 billion in assets held on behalf of investors, with operating expenses of Sh250 million. Managed in partnership with Standard Investment Bank and ALA Capital Limited, the Ziidi MMF allows M-Pesa users to invest from as little as Sh100 directly from their mobile wallets, earning daily interest with instant withdrawal access. The fund’s rapid ascent reflects a broader surge in Kenya’s money market fund industry, where total assets under management reached Sh400 billion by Q3 2025. Ziidi’s success has also served as a springboard for Safaricom’s broader financial services ambitions, including the subsequent launch of Ziidi Trader, which enables M-Pesa users to buy and sell shares on the Nairobi Securities Exchange directly from their phones.
Key Overview
- Profit After Tax: Sh784.2 million (14-month period ending December 2025)
- Investment Income: Approximately Sh1 billion
- Assets Under Management: Sh14.7 billion (investor funds as of December 2025)
- Operating Expenses: Sh250 million
- Expected Loss Allowance: Sh10.55 million
- Fund Launch: December 2024 (public launch January 2025)
- Minimum Investment: Sh100 via M-Pesa wallet
- Fund Managers: Standard Investment Bank and ALA Capital Limited
- Asset Allocation: Sh7.48 billion in call deposits, Sh4.51 billion in deposits with financial institutions, Sh908.4 million in Treasury bills
- Transaction Fees: Zero — all deposits and withdrawals are free
- Regulator: Capital Markets Authority (CMA)
- Active Investors: Over 1.15 million (as of mid-2025)
- Industry Context: Kenya’s MMF assets under management reached Sh400 billion in Q3 2025
Markets move fast; don’t get left behind. We’ve paired the Serrari Group Market Index with a curated Marketplace and a comprehensive Wealth Builder Course to ensure you have the data—and the skills—to act on it.
From Launch to Profitability in Record Time
When Safaricom officially launched the Ziidi Money Market Fund in January 2025, it was pitched as a product designed to make investment accessible to every Kenyan with a mobile phone. Fourteen months later, the financial results suggest the pitch has resonated far beyond expectations.
The fund’s Sh784.28 million net profit was driven by investment income of Sh1 billion, generated from a diversified portfolio that includes call deposits of Sh7.48 billion, deposits with financial institutions of Sh4.51 billion, and Sh908.4 million in Treasury bills. Call deposits and bank placements comprised roughly 76% of the fund’s total assets — a conservative allocation strategy consistent with the capital preservation mandate of money market funds.
Operating expenses stood at Sh250 million for the period, with an additional Sh10.55 million recorded as an expected loss allowance. Together, these costs accounted for approximately 26% of total income. The fund’s management fee is set at 2% of interest generated per annum, a rate broadly in line with the wider Kenyan MMF industry.
The speed of Ziidi’s growth is best understood in context. Within its first month of being available to the public, the fund had already attracted over 450,000 users and Sh2.85 billion in assets under management. By June 2025, assets had reached Sh10.68 billion with more than 1.15 million active investors. By the end of December 2025, total investor funds had reached Sh14.7 billion — a trajectory that places Ziidi among the fastest-growing money market funds in Kenyan history.
How Ziidi Works: Simplicity as a Competitive Weapon
The mechanics of Ziidi are deliberately straightforward. M-Pesa users can opt in to the fund through the M-Pesa app or by dialling the USSD short code 3345#. Once enrolled, they can invest from as little as Sh100 directly from their M-Pesa wallet. Interest is accrued daily and credited to the investor’s Ziidi account, and withdrawals are processed instantly back to the user’s M-Pesa wallet without penalties or waiting periods.
One of Ziidi’s most critical competitive advantages is its fee structure — or rather, the absence of one for users. All transactions to and from M-Pesa to the Ziidi MMF are completely free, with no charges for deposits or withdrawals. This stands in contrast to other money market funds in Kenya, where investors typically incur M-Pesa transaction charges to move money between their wallets and investment accounts. This zero-fee structure, underwritten by Safaricom’s control of the M-Pesa ecosystem, gives Ziidi a structural edge that independent fund managers cannot easily replicate.
The fund also offers a lock feature, allowing users to set aside money for a fixed period to build financial discipline, and has introduced a Shariah-compliant option to appeal to Muslim investors whose faith prohibits earning traditional interest. The Capital Markets Authority has approved Ziidi MMF as an individual investment fund, though Safaricom has indicated plans to expand the offering to chamas (investment groups) and businesses in the future.
The Partnership Driving Ziidi’s Performance
Ziidi is not a solo Safaricom venture. The fund is managed by two professional fund managers: Standard Investment Bank (SIB) and ALA Capital Limited. SIB, founded by James Wangunyu, is one of Kenya’s established investment banking firms and also operates the Mansa X fund suite.
The financial impact of the Ziidi partnership on SIB has been transformative. According to a recent analysis, SIB closed its 2025 financial year with a record profit of Sh1.04 billion — up from Sh97.5 million in 2024 — with the surge driven primarily by a 202.5% increase in financial services revenue linked to Mansa X management fees and the Ziidi fund co-management arrangement. Total income for SIB more than tripled to Sh2.188 billion for the year. This underscores the commercial power of Safaricom’s distribution network: access to M-Pesa’s user base effectively turned SIB from a mid-tier investment bank into one of the most significant fund management operations in the country within a single year.
SIB’s Founder and Managing Director James Wangunyu emphasised at the launch that the partnership was designed to deliver above-market-average returns while advancing financial inclusion. ALA Capital’s involvement ensures an additional layer of portfolio management oversight. The combination of professional fund management with Safaricom’s unparalleled distribution infrastructure has proved to be a potent formula.
Context is everything. While you follow today’s updates, use the Serrari Group Market Index and Marketplace to spot emerging shifts. Need to sharpen your edge? Our Wealth Builder Course turns these insights into a professional-grade strategy.
Riding Kenya’s Money Market Fund Boom
Ziidi’s success is not occurring in isolation. Kenya’s money market fund industry has been experiencing a sustained period of growth that has accelerated in recent years. Industry data shows that MMF assets under management grew by 7% to approximately Sh400 billion in Q3 2025, up from Sh372.8 billion reported in June. More broadly, total assets under management across all Collective Investment Schemes in Kenya reached Sh679.6 billion as of September 30, 2025 — a 14% increase from Sh596.3 billion in Q2 2025.
According to the Capital Markets Authority’s Q3 2025 Collective Investment Schemes report, Kenya had 55 approved collective investment schemes comprising 234 funds as of September 2025, with 41 actively operating. Money market funds remain the most popular investment type, though their dominance as a share of total CIS assets has gradually declined from over 90% in 2021 to 59% in September 2025, as investors increasingly diversify into fixed income and special funds.
The broader growth has been remarkable. The CMA reported that the total number of investors in CIS funds grew from 1.3 million in September 2024 to nearly 3 million by September 2025 — more than doubling in a single year. The Capital Markets Authority has attributed this expansion to increased investor education, aggressive digital marketing by fund managers, and rising awareness that MMFs offer better returns than traditional bank savings accounts while maintaining high liquidity.
Within this booming landscape, the competitive hierarchy has been shifting. CMA data for the period ending December 2025 shows that Sanlam Unit Trust maintained the largest market share at 19.2% with assets of Sh130.5 billion, followed by the Standard Investment Trust Fund (which includes Mansa X and Ziidi) at 15.03% with Sh102.1 billion. CIC Unit Trust held third place at 14.38% with Sh97.8 billion. Ziidi’s contribution to the Standard Investment Trust Fund’s rapid 32.6% growth in assets was a key driver of its ascent to the number two position in the market.
Beyond Savings: Ziidi Trader and the Stock Market Push
Safaricom’s ambitions for the Ziidi brand extend well beyond money market investing. In November 2025, the company piloted Ziidi Trader — and by February 2026, it had officially launched the feature in partnership with the Nairobi Securities Exchange, enabling M-Pesa users to buy and sell NSE-listed shares directly from the M-Pesa app with zero paperwork and no need for a separate brokerage account.
The potential scale of this initiative is significant. While Kenya has approximately 1.4 million registered investors on the NSE, only about 61,000 — roughly 4.3% — are actively trading. By embedding stock trading functionality into an app used daily by 37.91 million active M-Pesa users, Safaricom is attempting to unlock a massive pool of dormant retail capital. If even a fraction of M-Pesa’s user base begins investing, the impact on NSE liquidity could be transformative. Some analysts have suggested that the initiative could help Kenya overtake South Africa in retail stock ownership by 2027, driven not by GDP but by technology-led inclusion.
Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa has framed Ziidi Trader as the natural evolution of M-Pesa’s 18-year journey. At the launch, he stated that Ziidi Trader represents a step in democratising wealth and making investing simple, convenient, and accessible to everyone. NSE CEO Frank Mwiti echoed this, noting that bringing NSE trading to M-Pesa would make it easier for more people, both locally and in the diaspora, to play an active role in Kenya’s economic growth.
M-Pesa’s Transformation: From Payments Tool to Financial Ecosystem
Ziidi represents a pivotal chapter in the longer story of M-Pesa’s evolution. When M-Pesa launched in 2007, its core function was simple: enabling Kenyans to send and receive money via mobile phone. Over the subsequent 18 years, it has expanded into merchant payments, bill settlement, microloans (through products like M-Shwari and Fuliza), savings, insurance, and now investment.
According to Safaricom’s half-year results for FY2026, M-Pesa accounted for 45.4% of total service revenue at Sh88.06 billion, growing 14% year-on-year. Financial services already represent 5.2% of M-Pesa’s revenues, generating Sh4.6 billion in the six months ending September 2025 — up 13.9% from the same period a year earlier. The company’s total customer base stands at 62.27 million, with 46.44 million one-month active users.
The Ziidi platform — encompassing the MMF, the Shariah-compliant option, and now the stock trading feature — sits at the heart of Safaricom’s strategy to position M-Pesa as a comprehensive financial services ecosystem rather than merely a payment utility. In an economy where traditional banking has historically underserved large segments of the population, this mobile-first approach to wealth creation could have profound implications for financial inclusion and long-term economic participation.
What the Numbers Mean for Kenyan Investors
For the millions of Kenyans now using Ziidi, the fund’s performance offers concrete validation. A Sh784 million profit generated from Sh14.7 billion in investor funds — with daily interest accrual and zero transaction fees — represents a meaningful return proposition, particularly for micro-investors who might otherwise earn nothing on idle M-Pesa balances.
The broader implications are equally significant. Kenya’s money market fund industry has grown from Sh56.6 billion in assets in March 2018 to Sh679.6 billion across all CIS funds by September 2025 — an increase of over 1,100%. Products like Ziidi are both a beneficiary and an accelerant of this trend, channelling money that previously sat idle in mobile wallets into productive financial instruments that fund government securities, bank deposits, and corporate paper.
For Safaricom, Ziidi represents a new revenue stream that deepens customer engagement and stickiness on the M-Pesa platform. For Kenya’s capital markets, it represents a potential influx of retail participation that could deepen market liquidity and broaden economic ownership. And for the average Kenyan investor, it represents something that was previously out of reach: a simple, fee-free, mobile-first pathway to growing their money — one Sh100 deposit at a time.
Your financial future isn’t something you wait for—it’s something you build.
The real question is: when do you begin?
Move beyond simply staying informed.
Navigate the markets with clarity—track trends through the Serrari Group Market Index, uncover opportunities in the Serrari Marketplace, and build practical knowledge with our Curated Wealth Builder Course.
Stay connected to what truly matters.
Get daily insights on macro trends and financial movements across Kenya, Africa, and global markets—delivered through the Serrari Newsletter.
Growth opens doors.
Advance your career through professional programs including ACCA, HESI A2, ATI TEAS 7 , HESI EXIT , NCLEX – RN and NCLEX – PN, Financial Literacy!🌟—designed to move you forward with confidence.
See where money is flowing—clearly and in real time.
Track Money Market Funds, Treasury Bills, Treasury Bonds, Green Bonds, and Fixed Deposits, alongside global and African indexes, key economic indicators, and the evolving Crypto and stablecoin landscape—all within Serrari’s Market Index.
