Safaricom’s six‑month results to 30 September 2025 reveal that M‑PESA’s revenue is now driven mainly by consumer and business payments, which together contributed about KES 62.8 billion – roughly 71% of total M‑PESA earnings – compared with KES 18.5 billion from cash withdrawals.

Transaction volume rose 26.5% to 21.87 billion, but the total value grew only 5% to KES 20.21 trillion, indicating a shift toward many low‑value micro‑transactions that often carry little or no fee.

M‑PESA’s average revenue per active customer slipped slightly to KES 388.29, even as each user performed 3.5% more chargeable transactions, averaging 38.69 per period.

The merchant ecosystem expanded sharply, with active Lipa na M‑PESA merchants increasing 32.2% to 870,740 and Pochi tills rising 72.6% to 1.5 million, creating a combined base of 2.37 million merchants.

New products such as Taasi Till and Taasi Pochi, launched in May, offer instant credit of KES 1,500 to KES 250,000 for qualifying merchants, while the overdraft service Fuliza reached 9.1 million users and generated KES 2.6 billion in revenue.

The M‑PESA app, rebranded as My OneApp, now hosts 5.8 million active consumer users – a 62.8% increase – and 347,700 active business customers, allowing direct interaction with Safaricom without agents.

Despite the rapid growth of payments, financial‑service products built on the wallet, such as lending and savings, contributed only KES 4.6 billion – 5.2% of M‑PESA revenue – highlighting the early stage of this revenue stream.

Safaricom’s overall service revenue for the period was KES 194.0 billion, with the gap between connectivity and M‑PESA narrowing to KES 8.1 billion, reflecting the telecom side’s slower growth relative to the financial‑services arm.

Mobile data revenue grew 13.4% to KES 40.3 billion, driven by higher usage per subscriber (up 20.6% to 4.85 GB) and lower per‑megabyte pricing, while voice and messaging revenues fell 2.1% and 11.7% respectively.

Operating free cash flow declined 11.5% as capital spending increased, underscoring the financial pressure of expanding the broader services platform.