Kenya adds 9 million mobile money users but the easy growth is over

Kenya added 9 million mobile subscriptions in the year to December 2025, bringing the total to 51.36 million, according to the latest data from the Communications Authority (CA). 

Subscriptions rose from 42.30 million in the previous year, with a 5.6% jump in the December quarter, driven by holiday spending. Although that jump is familiar, the market’s structure has changed.

That growth pushed mobile money penetration to 98%, leaving little room to add new users. Mobile money operators will now compete on usage, with transaction frequency, balances held, and embedded services determining who grows next.

Since 2022, Airtel Money has offered cheaper or free transfers to encourage frequent use, while Safaricom’s M-PESA has added products like savings, credit, and merchant payments within M-PESA to keep users transacting daily. 

M-PESA still dominates, but its grip has loosened: market share has slipped from about 95% in 2023 to below 90% in 2025, while Airtel Money has climbed into double digits on the back of pricing and distribution. Airtel’s strategy has been direct, with lower fees, free on-net transfers, and aggressive agent expansion to attract price-sensitive users.

That pricing gap is now under pressure. Regulators want costs to fall further, with the Central Bank pushing to cut average transaction fees from about KES 23 ($0.18) to KES 10 ($0.077) over the next few years. That limits how far Airtel can continue to use price as its main lever and squeezes margins for both players.

Mobile money users can move money across networks more easily, removing one of M-PESA’s long-held advantages thanks to interoperability efforts. Cross-network transfers are now routine, which has weakened the need to stay within a single ecosystem

Safaricom’s response has been to deepen M-PESA rather than defend it. The telco is investing heavily in M-PESA’s infrastructure and layering in products around the wallet, from savings and money market funds to business credit and merchant tools, to keep users inside its ecosystem even if switching costs fall.

In November 2024, Safaricom rolled out Ziidi, a money market fund, within M-PESA, allowing users to move funds from their wallets into interest-earning accounts with low minimums and no transfer fees. In February 2026, it added stock trading through Ziidi Trader to let users buy shares on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) directly from the M-PESA app without a brokerage account 

Airtel, on the other hand, is using pricing to win entry, then trying to build activity through on-net free transfers to pull in cost-sensitive users. It is also attempting to build everyday use by expanding its reach to about 150,000 agents across Kenya and pushing merchant payments and wallet services so that those users transact more often. The risk is that cheaper transfers alone do not guarantee long-term engagement once fees converge.

Mobile money penetration has increased from 82.1% to 98% over the past year, closing the access gap. At that level, headline subscription growth says less about the market than transaction intensity and active users.