What you need to know about M-PESA’s Ziidi Trader

On Tuesday, Safaricom launched Ziidi Trader, a new service that allows M-PESA users to buy and sell shares listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), addressing a gap in Kenya’s capital markets that stockbrokers and investment banks have yet to fully resolve.

The platform will enable the over 37 million M-PESA users to buy and sell stocks the same way they send money to a friend or pay for utilities like electricity. To understand why Ziidi Trader feels different, it helps to picture the before-and-after of how ordinary Kenyans have accessed capital markets.

“Ziidi Trader is a powerful step in democratizing wealth for our customers. For eighteen years, M‑PESA has transformed how Kenyans live, work, and do business,” Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa said during the launch. “Today, in partnership with the NSE, we are extending that impact to how our customers build and grow their wealth.”

Paperwork and stockbrokers

Until recently, someone in Nairobi, Mombasa, or Kisumu, three of Kenya’s biggest cities, who wanted to buy shares on the NSE had to deal with a lot of paperwork and go through a licenced stockbroker, including some banks like KCB Group and DTB.

First, you needed a Central Depository System (CDS) account, an identity that brokers open for you. Then you’d engage a licenced stock brokerage, fill out forms, do Know‑Your‑Customer (KYC) checks, link your bank accounts, and only then could you buy listed equities. This is the process in most African capital markets, but in Kenya, it was a barrier, particularly after the broad uptake of digital payments.

With Ziidi Trader, Safaricom has decided that if people already trust M‑PESA with their money—sending, receiving, saving, borrowing—they should be able to invest it too. So instead of forcing everyone into separate brokerage accounts, Ziidi Trader brings stock trading inside M‑PESA.

Buy shares like sending money

For Ziidi Trader, you don’t need a separate login or a CDS number. Instead, as soon as you have an M‑PESA account, Ziidi Trader becomes an option in the app menu. Safaricom has integrated onboarding, trading, tracking, and settlement into a seamless flow. The app gives live prices, allowing users to decide how much to invest, confirm the order, and—just like a payment—have the M-PESA wallet debited.

When you sell, the cash is returned to the same wallet instantly.

There’s no minimum bank balance required to unlock access, unlike with traditional stockbrokers. To get started, you’re asked to verify basic information, such as your source of funds and occupation, and to acknowledge that investing carries risk. Safaricom also embeds standard disclaimers about stock prices rising and falling, because Ziidi Trader is still a gateway to fundamental financial markets, not a guaranteed income stream.

How it works

Users don’t get a CDS account in their names under Ziidi Trader. Instead, trades from many customers are pooled into an account operated by Safaricom in partnership with licenced brokers like Kestrel Capital. It means the broker holds the actual share certificates, and Ziidi Trader keeps an internal ledger that shows how much of each stock M-PESA users own.

That’s not inherently bad—it’s actually how many modern fintech trading apps manage large volumes of small trades across markets—but it is different from the traditional model where your name is written on the exchange’s registry.

The structure might mean no direct voting rights, or, in an extreme scenario involving broker insolvency, protections could differ from standard CDS ownership. The risk is theoretical mainly today, but it’s one of the trade‑offs of simplicity.

Why this matter

Tuesday’s launch responds to a long‑standing gap in Kenya’s capital markets. For years, retail participation on the NSE has barely budged. If Ziidi Trader succeeds in lowering the barriers, it could bring millions of new retail participants into equities.

What users should understand

From a user perspective, here are a few practical tips worth considering before investing:

1. Ease of use doesn’t eliminate risk: Shares can go up or down, and there’s no guaranteed return just because trading is simple.
2. Your shares are tracked internally: Under the Ziidi Trader model, the broker holds the shares on behalf of many users, so account holders should understand how that affects voting rights or dispute resolution.
3. Investor education still matters: A click is easier than a brokerage form, but an uninformed trade can still lose money. Regulators and Safaricom include risk notices during onboarding to help here.