Safaricom's Fuliza revenue jumps 86% to $38M with 17.2M borrowers

Safaricom's Fuliza M-PESA overdraft service generated KES 4.9 billion ($38 million) in the six months to September 2026, an 86% year-on-year jump, the company revealed at an investor briefing in Nairobi last Thursday. Active borrowers nearly doubled to 17.2 million, making Fuliza the largest revenue driver among Safaricom's six lending products—accounting for 71% of the KES 7 billion ($54.3 million) total credit revenue.

Yet the growth carries warning signs. The average loan size fell 24.6% to just KES 192 ($1.49), while the repayment-to-disbursement ratio slipped to 99.6% from 102.4% a year earlier, suggesting more loans are going unpaid within the period. Sister products KCB M-PESA and M-Shwari saw revenue grow modestly (11.9% and 7.7%) but active users decline 7% and 5.8% respectively. Safaricom did not disclose non-performing loan ratios or how credit risk is shared with banking partners NCBA and KCB.

For Nigerian observers, the Fuliza model—high-volume, micro-ticket lending embedded in a dominant mobile money platform—offers a template MTN MoMo and Airtel Money are increasingly mirroring. But the declining repayment ratio and opaque risk split between telco and banks raise questions about sustainability when economic pressure hits borrowers.

Will Nigerian regulators demand similar transparency on repayment metrics and risk-sharing before mobile lending scales further, or will the market repeat Kenya's experiment with less oversight?

SOURCE: https://techcabal.com/2026/11/05/safaricom-fuliza-m-pesa-revenue-rise/