About 84,000 small investors bought shares on the Nairobi bourse through the M-Pesa stock-trading platform, Ziidi Trader, between February and March this year, underlining the impact of mobile financial platforms in revitalising retail market participation.
New disclosures from telecoms operator Safaricom show that 84,000 Ziidi Trader accounts participated in share purchases within two months of the platform’s launch.
About 511,000 investors signed up for Ziidi Trader, which allows M-Pesa users to directly buy shares on the Nairobi Securities Exchange without opening a traditional brokerage account. This indicates that while many small investors showed interest in the platform, only a fraction actively traded.
The number of traders on the M-Pesa platform also trails the total number of individual investor accounts with CDS accounts, which stood at 1.28 million as of the end of March, according to data from the Central Depository and Settlement Corporation.
Additional data from the NSE covering February 10 to May 6 shows that Ziidi Trader facilitated trades valued at Sh772.2 million, represented by 268,840 transactions. The platform’s share of overall market trades has fluctuated between one and two per cent, averaging 1.67 per cent over the period.
Peak market share was recorded on March 30, 2026, at 4.27 percent, while the highest number of trades occurred on February 11, the day after launch, when 9,320 deals were executed. The highest daily turnover was recorded on February 16 at Sh28.98 million.
The average Ziidi trade size over the period to May 6 was Sh2,872.60, compared with the overall market average deal size of Sh63,950.
This highlights the dominance of institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals in traditional market activity.
The Ziidi Trader has been credited with boosting retail participation by removing the requirement for a Central Depository System (CDS) account.
‘This confirms that ordinary citizens are now actively participating in Kenya’s capital markets,’ said Eric Ruenji, founder and chairman of Theo Capital Holdings.
The Ziidi Trader is a mobile-based share trading platform jointly offered by Safaricom, NSE and Kestrel Capital. It enables customers to buy and sell NSE-listed shares and corporate bonds directly from their mobile phones, monitor portfolios and access market insights digitally.
Safaricom has credited the platform with expanding access to capital markets. ‘The launch of Ziidi Trader marked an important milestone, broadening access to capital markets and demonstrating early traction as a new driver of financial deepening and inclusion,’ the company said.
The platform played a key role in the recently concluded Kenya Pipeline Company IPO. Of the 73,000 individual investors who participated, 36,000 placed orders through the M-Pesa platform.
At the close of the IPO, President William Ruto and National Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi praised the platform for enabling citizens to directly participate in ownership of national assets.
Ziidi Trader’s most notable impact on the NSE has been increasing the number of share orders rather than overall traded value. Daily orders have risen above 10,000 from a previous average of below 7,000 before its introduction. More than half of NSE share orders on launch day came through the platform.
The system relies on existing M-Pesa know-your-customer credentials and PIN authentication, eliminating the need for new account creation.
Stocks purchased are held in a single omnibus account managed by Kestrel Capital, which executes trades on behalf of users.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange is betting on the platform to grow retail participation to as many as nine million investors by the end of December 2029.