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Safaricom M-Pesa Africa

“Can Africa's dominant mobile money rail become the embedded-finance distribution layer for credit, insurance, wealth, and cross-border on a continent that skipped cards?”

Founded2007
HQNairobi, Kenya
IndustryFintech / Mobile money
The story

Launched 2007 as a peer-to-peer mobile money service on Safaricom's GSM network, M-PESA evolved into the dominant payments rail in Kenya (~90% of mobile money) and East Africa. M-PESA Africa is the joint venture between Safaricom and Vodacom that operates the platform across multiple African markets. The company is now pushing beyond payments into a full financial supermarket — embedded credit (Fuliza, Taasi, Faraja BNPL), insurance (Tuunza Mapato, device insurance via SIAL), wealth (Ziidi MMF), cross-border (M-PESA Global via TerraPay), and card issuance (Visa GlobalPay) — using bank partners as the regulated balance sheet.

Last 12 months
2025-05
2025-06
2024-12
2026-05
Product timeline
2007
M-PESA launched by Safaricom in Kenya as mobile money transfer service· banking
2016
Safaricom licensed by CBK as Payment Service Provider· banking
2019
Fuliza overdraft facility launched in partnership with banks· lending
2022
M-PESA GlobalPay Virtual Visa card launched with Visa· card
2023
Faraja BNPL launched for Lipa na M-PESA merchants with EDOMx· lending
2024
Insurance intermediary license granted by IRA; device insurance RFP· pivot
2025
Revamped business credit: Fuliza Biashara, Taasi Till, Taasi Pochi launched with bank partners· lending
Regulated entities
2
regulatory licences held by Safaricom M-Pesa Africa
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
6 layers disclosed in Safaricom M-Pesa Africa’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
M-PESA (self-operated)Lipa na M-PESA (self-operated)Pochi la Biashara (self-operated)M-PESA Paybill (self-operated)M-PESA Till (self-operated)
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Card network
in the full report
Ledger
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
FX & payouts
in the full report
Accounting gap: significant
14 more providers across 5 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.