Ziidi Trader: from one share to a stake in the future
On a Tuesday morning in Nairobi, history quietly rewrites itself. The stock market – once the preserve of suited brokers and minimum deposits – is now open to anyone with a phone.
From quality assurance to human dignity
For decades, Kenya’s stock market has been in plain sight, yet out of reach. The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) has long been a fixture in the city’s financial landscape, but for most Kenyans, investing in listed companies felt like standing outside a locked gate. The barriers were real: broker accounts, complicated sign-ups, high minimum deposits, and a perception that the stock market was built for the wealthy, not for you.
On 10 February 2026, that gate swung open.
Ziidi Trader – Safaricom’s new stock-trading feature built directly into the M-PESA app – means that anyone with a phone can now buy and sell shares on the NSE from the same platform they use to pay for lunch. No broker. No paperwork. No minimums that price people out. Just one share, if that’s where you want to start.
“Ziidi Trader is a powerful step in democratising wealth for our customers,” says Peter Ndegwa, CEO of Safaricom. “We’re making investing simple, convenient and accessible to everyone, everywhere.”
It’s democratisation by design. M-PESA already serves 40 million customers across Kenya – a network that helped drive financial inclusion from 26.7% of adults in 2006 to 84.8% in 2024. Now, the same app that transformed payments is transforming access to wealth creation.
The market in your pocket
Ziidi Trader doesn’t reinvent the stock market – it removes the friction. Open the M-PESA app, navigate to Financial Services, and you’re in. From there, you can buy or sell NSE-listed shares, monitor your portfolio in real time, access market insights, and even invest in corporate bonds.
The platform handles everything that used to require a middleman: real-time price updates, secure transactions backed by M-PESA’s encryption and authentication, and full regulatory oversight from the Capital Markets Authority. You get transparency – clear costs, detailed reports, educational content – without the gatekeeping.
“Innovation thrives where diversity is intentional, and opportunity is systematically cultivated. New platforms such as Ziidi Trader are also opening doors for more Kenyans, including women, to begin participating in investment opportunities and wealth-building tools that were historically out of reach for many ordinary citizens.”
For traders who’ve used Safaricom’s earlier Ziidi products (the money market fund and Ziidi Shariah), the evolution is natural. Ziidi already proved you could start investing with as little as 100 Kenyan shillings, with zero deposit or withdrawal fees. Ziidi Trader extends that philosophy into equities: low barriers, high accessibility, all built on infrastructure that already reaches 99% of Kenya’s population.
What you can do on Ziidi Trader
Ziidi Trader transforms your M-PESA app into a personal stock-trading platform. Here’s what you can do:
- Buy and sell NSE-listed shares – start from as little as one share.
- Monitor your portfolio in real time – track performance and company data on the go.
- Access market insights – get the information you need to make informed decisions.
- Zero deposit and withdrawal fees – keep more of your money working for you.
All of it is regulated by the Capital Markets Authority and secured with M-PESA’s encryption and authentication.
Frank Mwiti, CEO of the NSE, frames the partnership as a bridge: “Partnering with Safaricom is helping us bring the stock market closer to everyday Kenyans … making it easier for more people, both locally and abroad, to invest and play an active role in Kenya’s economic growth.”
The “abroad” matters. Ziidi Trader opens the NSE not just to Kenyans in the country, but to the diaspora – a community that has long wanted a stake in home-grown companies but faced logistical walls. Now, all they need is a phone and an M-PESA account.
Financial inclusion, meet wealth creation
This is where Ziidi Trader connects to something bigger. Vodacom Group’s Vision 2030 sets a target of 120 million financial services customers across our markets by 2030 – not just payments, but full-spectrum digital financial services. Ziidi Trader is what that pillar looks like in practice.
Kenya has already led the way. M-PESA generated over KES 161 billion in revenue in FY25, supporting 1.13 million jobs and delivering a total economic value of KES 1.1 trillion (roughly $8.5 billion) for the 12 months to March 2025. That’s the foundation. Ziidi Trader is the next floor: moving customers from financial access to financial growth.
It’s a shift that matters across Vodacom’s markets. If you can lower the barriers to investing – not just in Kenya, but from Cape to Cairo – you’re building a generation of people who see themselves as participants in the economy, not spectators.
The platform also aligns with Vodacom’s operational efficiency and partnership strategy. Rather than build a stock exchange from scratch, Safaricom partnered with an established institution (NSE) and integrated it into existing infrastructure (M-PESA). That’s scalable, replicable, and exactly the kind of shared-value model that Vision 2030 champions.
From locked gates to open doors
Ziidi Trader shows that access is as much about innovation as infrastructure. For years, the assumption was that stock markets were too complex, too regulated, too elite to open to the masses. Safaricom and NSE imagined otherwise.
The result is powerful. Not because it’s flashy, but because it’s quiet. A student in Eldoret can buy a share in Safaricom. A teacher in Mombasa can build a portfolio during her lunch break. A software engineer in London can invest in Kenyan companies without flying home to open a broker account.
Each of those actions is small. Together, they rewrite who gets to build wealth in Kenya. For the 37.9 million people with M-PESA accounts, the gate is no longer locked. It was never really about the market – it was always about who gets to walk through the door.
