Safaricom has put an interest-free savings product inside M-Pesa, nearly 20 months after regulators approved it. The Kenyan telco and Gulfcap Investment Bank launched the Ziidi Shari’ah Money Market Fund in Nairobi on October 6. Customers can start investing with as little as KES 100.
Access runs through My OneApp or by dialling *334#, according to launch coverage by The Business Watch. The fund has no maximum investment, although M-Pesa’s own limits still apply. Those caps stand at KES 500,000 a day and KES 250,000 per transaction.
Gulfcap manages the fund under its Shari’ah Supervisory Board, and the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) regulates it. The money goes into short-term, highly liquid instruments held with Shari’ah-compliant banks. It avoids riba, the Islamic term for interest. The fund operates separately from Safaricom’s conventional Ziidi fund.
Why Safaricom Wants Ethical Investors
The conventional fund gives Safaricom a strong case. Ziidi went live in January 2025 with Standard Investment Bank and ALA Capital as fund managers. Its assets more than doubled to KES 18.7 billion in the year to March 2026, according to TechTrends Kenya. TechMoran, citing the same period, put its customer count at about 2 million.
That base sits on top of a far larger one. TechMoran reports that M-Pesa serves more than 41 million customers. A Shari’ah-compliant product lets Safaricom sell to people who avoid interest-bearing funds, without asking them to leave the app they already use.
Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa said the fund gives customers an option that matches their values. Gulfcap chief executive Saud Shahbal said it serves Muslims and anyone who prefers ethical investing. The framing widens the audience beyond one faith, which is a smart commercial move.
The launch also fits a pattern. My OneApp, the super app Safaricom unveiled in April, folds payments and services into one screen, and the telco keeps adding financial products around it. Safaricom, which marked 25 years in business with a nationwide promotion, has set its sights on becoming Africa’s leading purpose-led technology company by 2030.
The Gulfcap tie-up also repeats a familiar model. Safaricom pairs M-Pesa’s reach with outside specialists, as it did when it picked nine startups for its Spark Accelerator alongside M-Pesa Africa and Sumitomo Corporation.
The Questions Safaricom Has Yet to Answer
Start with timing. The CMA approved the fund in February 2025. Neither company explained the gap in the coverage TechMoonshot reviewed. A 20-month wait for a product the regulator had already cleared raises questions about readiness, partner terms or demand planning.
Returns come next. Techweez reports that the fund pays variable daily returns, yet none of the launch coverage TechMoonshot reviewed named an expected yield. Conventional money market funds typically hold treasury bills and similar short-term debt, according to Nation Media Group. This fund holds deposits with Shari’ah-compliant banks instead. Whether those deposits pay comparably is the first thing customers will ask.
Fees and revenue sharing matter too. Business Daily reported in late 2025 that Safaricom earned about KES 100 million from the conventional Ziidi fund. The paper also noted that Safaricom does not disclose how it splits revenue with its fund managers. The same opacity on a faith-based product would draw sharper scrutiny.
History adds pressure. Safaricom’s first fund, Mali, began as a 2019 pilot with Genghis Capital. Partnership disputes followed, and Mali now accepts no new investors. A fund overseen by a Shari’ah board needs clean governance from day one.
Capacity is the last test. If the fund grows like its conventional sibling, Gulfcap needs enough Shari’ah-compliant banks to hold the deposits without squeezing yields.
What to Watch Next
Ziidi Shari’ah gives Safaricom a credible new audience inside a platform it already owns. The first published returns will show how competitive it is. The fee schedule will show how fairly Safaricom treats customers who chose it on principle. Asset growth against the conventional fund will show whether faith-based investing is a niche or a second engine for M-Pesa.
