Kenya Mobile Money 2026: The Numbers, Sourced

M-PESA processed KShs 41.68 trillion in FY26 across 40.99 million one-month-active Kenyan customers, 46.4 billion transactions in the year, KShs 182.7 billion in revenue, 333,011 agents, and a 57.8 percent free-tier share of transaction volume. Every figure on this page is drawn from the two operators' own audited annual reports (Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026 and Airtel Africa plc Annual Report and Accounts 2026), with market-structure context from the Communications Authority of Kenya. Figures are for the financial year to 31 March 2026 unless stated. Currency conversions use approximately KShs 129 to the US dollar and are illustrative only.

1. M-PESA in numbers

M-PESA is the reason Kenya is a mobile-money case study for the world, and FY26 was its biggest year yet.

Scale

The platform processed KShs 41.68 trillion in transaction value over the year (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026). To put that in perspective, Safaricom itself frames it as 2.4 times the country's nominal GDP of KShs 17.58 trillion. On a daily basis that is over 136 million transactions worth more than KShs 114 billion (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026). Total transaction value grew 8.9 percent year on year, while the number of transactions grew faster, up 25.1 percent to 46.4 billion, a sign that Kenyans are using M-PESA for more, smaller, everyday payments (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026).

Customers

M-PESA reached 40.99 million one-month-active customers in Kenya, a 14.5 percent increase, growing faster than the underlying mobile base (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026). Across the Safaricom Group, one-month-active customers reached 50.66 million (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026).

Revenue

M-PESA generated KShs 182.7 billion in revenue, up 13.4 percent, and remains Safaricom's largest single revenue stream (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026). Safaricom breaks the M-PESA revenue profile into its component engines, with consumer transfers and business payments the two largest contributors, followed by merchant payments, wealth, and other services.

The rails underneath

None of this works without physical distribution. M-PESA ended the year with 333,011 agents, up from 298,890 a year earlier, the cash-in and cash-out network that keeps a digital system usable in a largely cash-earning economy (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026).

2. The merchant economy: tills and Pochi

The most striking growth story in the filing is not consumer payments, it is merchants. M-PESA's combined merchant base, formal Lipa na M-PESA tills plus informal Pochi la Biashara tills, reached 3.13 million, up from 1.83 million a year earlier, a jump of more than seventy percent in twelve months (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026).

• Lipa na M-PESA tills (the formal Buy Goods merchants) grew 54.2 percent to pass 1.04 million active tills, with merchant revenue up 21.7 percent to KShs 9.3 billion (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026).
• Pochi la Biashara tills (the informal-trader pocket, for mama mbogas, boda riders and kiosks) grew 81.5 percent to 2.09 million, generating around KShs 4 billion (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026).

The signal here is that Kenya's informal economy, long a cash stronghold, is digitising fast, and it is doing so through the lightest-weight product, Pochi, which needs no paperwork and no separate till number.

3. Credit and wealth: Fuliza and Ziidi

Mobile money in Kenya is no longer just moving money, it is lending and investing it.

Fuliza, the M-PESA overdraft underwritten by NCBA Bank Kenya and KCB Bank Kenya, drove financial-services revenue up 20.6 percent year on year to KShs 9.8 billion (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026). Fuliza lets customers complete a transaction when their balance is short, and repays automatically from the next deposit, which is why it has become woven into everyday spending rather than treated as a formal loan.

Ziidi, Safaricom's newer wealth platform, grew assets under management to KShs 18.7 billion, with the wider wealth-management line growing around 250 percent off a small base as Kenyans move into money-market funds and, through Ziidi Trader, the stock market directly from their phones (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026).

Together these show the direction of travel: the mobile-money wallet is becoming a full financial account, carrying credit, savings and investment alongside payments.

4. Financial inclusion and the free tier

One of the quieter but most important numbers in the Safaricom filing is how much of M-PESA is free. Of the 46.4 billion transactions processed in FY26, non-chargeable transactions made up 57.8 percent of total volumes, some 26.8 billion transactions on which the customer paid nothing (Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026).

This is deliberate. Small person-to-person transfers, the sub-KShs 100 payments that make up daily life for millions, are largely free, and Safaricom frames this as an affordability and financial-inclusion strategy rather than a giveaway. The commercial logic is that a system used for everything, including the tiny payments, becomes indispensable, and the value is captured on the larger, chargeable transactions and on the merchant, credit and wealth layers built on top.

For anyone comparing M-PESA charges, this is the context that matters: more than half of all M-PESA activity by volume carries no fee at all.

5. Airtel Money: the pan-African challenger

Airtel Money is the second force in African mobile money, and its 2026 numbers are large, but they must be read correctly, because they are not a Kenya figure. Airtel Money operates across Airtel Africa's fourteen markets, and its East Africa region alone spans Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia (Source: Airtel Africa plc Annual Report and Accounts 2026).

Across all of that footprint, in FY26 Airtel Money:

• Served 54.1 million customers, up 21.3 percent from 44.6 million (Source: Airtel Africa plc Annual Report and Accounts 2026).
• Processed a total transaction value (TPV) of US$195.9 billion, up 43.5 percent in constant currency, and exceeding an annualised US$215 billion run-rate by the final quarter (Source: Airtel Africa plc Annual Report and Accounts 2026).
• Generated mobile-money revenue of US$1,355 million, up 28.4 percent in constant currency, now 21.1 percent of Airtel Africa's total group revenue (Source: Airtel Africa plc Annual Report and Accounts 2026).
• Reached a TPV per customer of about US$332 a month, with mobile-money ARPU of US$2.3 (Source: Airtel Africa plc Annual Report and Accounts 2026).
• Grew its agent network by 39.1 percent (Source: Airtel Africa plc Annual Report and Accounts 2026).

In Kenya specifically, Airtel is the number-two mobile operator behind Safaricom, and Airtel Money is the number-two wallet, but it is a distant second on the Kenyan mobile-money metric, holding a share in the high single digits to around ten percent while M-PESA sits above ninety (Source: Communications Authority of Kenya quarterly sector statistics). Airtel Money's real strength is its breadth across the continent, not its depth in Kenya.

6. The comparison that tells the story

Set the two operators' own figures side by side and the concentration of Kenyan mobile money comes into focus.

Sources: Safaricom PLC Annual Report FY2026 (M-PESA column) and Airtel Africa plc Annual Report and Accounts 2026 (Airtel Money column). Dollar figures for M-PESA use approximately KShs 129 to the US dollar, illustrative only.

Read carefully, the table says something remarkable. M-PESA, in Kenya alone, processes more transaction value and earns more mobile-money revenue than Airtel Money does across fourteen African countries combined. By value, M-PESA's KShs 41.68 trillion is roughly US$323 billion at about KShs 129 to the dollar, well over Airtel Money's US$195.9 billion pan-African total. This is the density of Kenyan mobile money in a single comparison: not the biggest customer base on the continent, but by far the deepest usage.

7. The third force: Equitel and the banking-led model

M-PESA and Airtel Money are wallet-led. Kenya's third notable player is different. Equitel, run by Finserve Africa Limited, a subsidiary of Equity Group, is a mobile virtual network operator that runs on Airtel's network and turns the SIM into a direct channel into an Equity Bank account. There is no separate wallet float; you transact straight from the bank account, which is why Equitel has historically punched far above its subscriber weight by transaction value.

By SIM count Equitel is small, on the order of 1.5 million subscriptions, a low-single-digit share of Kenya's mobile market. But at its peak it was Kenya's number-two mobile-money service by value, handling hundreds of billions of shillings, because bank-account-linked transactions tend to be larger. Equitel's model, higher transaction limits, loans of up to KShs 3 million straight from the phone, and free transfers within the Equity network, is a genuinely distinct third option in the Kenyan market, and one most coverage overlooks.

8. Regulation: the mobile-money levy

Both operators now transact under Kenya's tightening tax regime for mobile money. Airtel Africa's filing specifically flags the Mobile Money Transaction Levy (Amendment) Act 2025, part of a broader trend of governments across the continent treating mobile money as a taxable base (Source: Airtel Africa plc Annual Report and Accounts 2026). For Kenyan consumers this shows up as a small charge layered onto transactions, and for operators it is a growing line of compliance and cost. Anyone tracking the true cost of moving money in Kenya has to account for the levy on top of the operator tariff, and it is a moving target worth checking at the point of any transaction.

9. What it means

Three things stand out from the 2026 filings.

First, Kenya's mobile money is deep, not just wide. M-PESA's 41 million customers is not an enormous base by African standards, but they use it for everything, 46.4 billion times a year, at a value of more than twice the country's GDP. That intensity, not headcount, is what makes Kenya unique.

Second, the money is moving up the stack. The fastest growth is in merchants, credit and wealth, tills up seventy percent, Fuliza-led financial services up a fifth, wealth assets multiplying. The wallet is becoming a bank account.

Third, affordability is a strategy, not an accident. With 57.8 percent of transactions free, the operators are deliberately trading fee income on small payments for total ubiquity, and monetising the layers built on top.

For businesses, developers and consumers, the practical takeaway is simple. Mobile money is no longer a feature of the Kenyan economy, it is the substrate the economy runs on, and understanding its costs, limits and products is now basic financial literacy.

Sources and notes

• Safaricom PLC, Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 31 March 2026. All M-PESA figures (transaction value, transaction count, customers, revenue, agents, merchants, Fuliza, Ziidi, free-tier share) are drawn from this filing.
• Airtel Africa plc, Annual Report and Accounts 2026, for the year ended 31 March 2026. All Airtel Money figures (customers, TPV, revenue, ARPU, agents, regional split) are drawn from this filing and cover Airtel Africa's fourteen markets, not Kenya alone.
• Communications Authority of Kenya, quarterly sector statistics, for market-share and Equitel context. Exact subscriber and share figures should be confirmed against the latest CAK release before quoting.

Currency conversions use an approximate rate of about KShs 129 to the US dollar and are illustrative only. Where geographies differ (Kenya-only M-PESA versus fourteen-market Airtel Money), we state so, and comparisons are presented to highlight that difference rather than to imply equivalence.

This report may be cited with attribution to paybillke. Figures are as reported by the companies for FY26 and are subject to the operators' own definitions and any subsequent restatement.

Related reading on paybillke

• Kenya Mobile Money Statistics 2026 (numbers reference hub) — the sourced, evergreen lookup version of this report. Every headline stat here is maintained there with primary-source citations.
• M-PESA charges 2026: full band-by-band tariff
• M-PESA loans compared 2026
• Fuliza explained
• M-PESA vs Airtel Money
• What is Equitel
• Airtel Money in Kenya (paybill directory)
• Fuliza hub