Safaricom Plc is piloting a brand new characteristic on its M-PESA cellular cash platform that may enable customers to purchase and promote shares listed on the Nairobi Securities Trade, increasing its footprint in Kenya’s monetary providers business.
The service, dubbed Ziidi Dealer, is designed to let hundreds of thousands of M-PESA customers entry inventory buying and selling immediately from their telephones, in what may mark a serious shift in retail participation within the nation’s capital markets. The characteristic will embrace real-time value feeds, watchlists, and portfolio monitoring instruments, just like these supplied by world buying and selling apps.
The transfer is a part of Safaricom’s broader technique to rework M-PESA from a funds service right into a full-fledged digital finance platform, combining cash transfers, financial savings, credit score, and investments underneath one ecosystem.
Kenya has about 1.4 million registered buyers on the NSE, but solely round 61,000 actively commerce, in line with trade knowledge. Excessive transaction prices, complicated onboarding, and the necessity to use licensed brokers have restricted wider market entry. Embedding buying and selling inside M-PESA — which counts over 32 million energetic customers — may assist democratize investing and inject new liquidity into the native market.
Ziidi Dealer follows the launch of Ziidi Cash Market Fund in January 2025, which has attracted greater than 450,000 customers and KES 7.5 billion ($48 million) in property underneath administration. That fund changed Safaricom’s earlier collaboration with Genghis Capital, referred to as Mali, which ended over management points.
With funds, financial savings, and buying and selling more and more interconnected, Safaricom is positioning M-PESA as East Africa’s dominant monetary tremendous app. If profitable, Ziidi Dealer may deepen retail engagement with Kenya’s capital markets and additional entrench Safaricom’s position within the area’s digital financial system.
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