M-pesa Kadogo Drove 17.1B Free Transactions in FY2026

In Short

• M-PESA Kadogo is Safaricom’s zero-fee offer for small payments.
• In FY2025/2026, it enabled 17.1 billion free transactions, 58% of all M-PESA activity.
• Safaricom says the push helped grow M-PESA revenue by 13.4% to KES 182.7 billion.

What Happened

A May 15 report detailed how M-PESA Kadogo has become a major driver of usage on M-PESA. “Kadogo” refers to small-value transactions.

Under the initiative, person-to-person transfers of KES 100 and below are zero-rated, which means users pay no transaction fee. Merchant payments of KES 200 and below are also free. Safaricom includes cash deposits at agent outlets and airtime purchases through M-PESA in the free or low-friction transactions that support daily spending.

In the 2025/2026 financial year, Safaricom reported that the programme facilitated 17.1 billion free transactions. That represented 58% of all activity on the platform.

The move traces back to COVID-19 relief measures, when fees on some low-value transfers were removed. Safaricom says the effect has been sustained, with transaction counts tripling between 2020 and 2026.

Across the full year, the M-PESA platform processed 46.4 billion transactions worth KES 41.7 trillion. Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa said removing fees reduced friction, which is the small extra cost or step that stops people from completing a payment.

Why It Matters

Small-value payments are where mobile money becomes a daily habit for households and informal businesses. Free transfers and low-cost merchant payments can pull more people into digital financial services, especially users who move small amounts many times per day.

For Safaricom, the numbers suggest Kadogo is not only a social inclusion play. It is also a volume strategy, where high transaction frequency helps grow overall platform revenue, even when many individual transactions carry no direct fee.

For Kenya’s wider fintech and payments ecosystem, M-PESA’s results reinforce a simple lesson. Pricing matters, and lowering fees on the smallest transactions can expand the addressable market for digital payments.