Safaricom has launched the Ziidi Trader, a new service that allows M-Pesa users to buy and sell shares listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) directly from the mobile money app.
- •The product integrates equity trading into the M-Pesa Financial Services menu, eliminating the need for separate broker accounts, paper-based onboarding, or identity verification beyond existing mobile money credentials.
- •The NSE recorded its highest number of daily trades on record from a retail perspective on Friday, after transactions routed through Safaricom’s Ziidi Trader accounted for roughly 7,500 of the 14,000 trades executed.
- •The surge, just days after the platform’s pilot began on Thursday, offered an early indication of how deeply integrating stock trading into M-Pesa could alter market participation patterns almost overnight.
Users can simply opt in, select listed companies they want to invest into, and execute the trades using their M-Pesa balances. The launch marks Safaricom’s most ambitious push into wealth management, extending its reach beyond payments and savings into active investing.
During the launch, President William Ruto urged the NSE, the Capital Markets Authority (CMA), and market intermediaries to reduce trading costs, aligning government policy with long-standing investor complaints about the expense of participating in the market.
Lower Barriers, Lower Costs
Ziidi Trader targets the long-standing friction that has limited retail participation in the NSE including high brokerage minimums, slow onboarding, and unfamiliar market processes. Transactions settle directly through M-Pesa, compressing what has traditionally been a multi-step process into a single interface.
By contrast, CDSC’s Dosikaa app preserves conventional ownership structures, underscoring Ziidi’s strategic choice to prioritise speed and mass-market accessibility over traditional market formality. With nearly 40 million M-Pesa active users in Kenya, the Ziidi Trader already has a ready mass market to tap into.
Moreover, conventional brokerage fees typically range between about 1.8% and 2.5% of transaction value, a level that has discouraged small and frequent trades. Ziidi Trader is expected to operate closer to a 1.5% cost structure, betting that lower margins can be offset by a sharp rise in retail trading volumes.
Safaricom has partnered with Kestrel Capital as the sole executing broker, centralising order flow through a single intermediary. In October last year, Kestrel was acquired by Theo Capital Holdings. The firm now occupies a central role in a wave of fintech-driven democratization of local equity markets, linking traditional brokerage expertise with emerging high-volume retail participation.
How it will benefit the NSE
Kenya has more than a million registered CDS accounts, but only a small fraction are active. Trading volumes have remained thin and the market has struggled to attract younger and lower-income investors.
Ziidi Trader places equity trading alongside everyday financial actions such as bill payments and airtime purchases. The proximity lowers psychological and practical barriers, potentially converting passive savers into active market participants.
The product builds on Safaricom’s Ziidi Money Market Fund, launched in 2025, which drew significant inflows by using the same opt-in simplicity. Together, the products position Safaricom as a revolutionary player in both savings and capital markets.
