Safaricom is lowering the cost of doing business on M PESA. Starting this August, the telecom giant is cutting charges across three merchant products: Pochi La Biashara, Lipa na M PESA Buy Goods and Business Till transfers.
The changes sit inside a larger campaign called PATA MORE, which also boosts data bundles and expands digital services, all without raising prices.
What is changing for merchants
Pochi La Biashara customers get the biggest immediate relief. From 1 August through 31 October, payments to Pochi merchant tills are free up to KES 200, up from a previous ceiling that charged customers well before that point. Above KES 200, a revised fee schedule kicks in for the next ninety days.
| Transaction Range (KES) | Charge For 3 Months From 1 August |
|---|---|
| 1 to 200 | Free |
| 201 to 500 | KES 7 |
| 501 to 1,000 | KES 13 |
| 1,001 to 1,500 | KES 23 |
| 1,501 to 2,500 | KES 33 |
| 2,501 to 250,000 | KES 50 |
Lipa na M PESA Buy Goods merchants see a similar boost starting 7 August. Free collections rise from KES 200 to KES 500. Anything above that threshold still carries a 0.55 percent fee, but the cap holds steady at KES 200, so larger transactions cost proportionally less.
| Band (KES) | Old Tariff | New Tariff |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 200 | Free | Free |
| 201 to 500 | 0.55% | Free |
| 501 to 36,363 | 0.55% | 0.55% |
| Above 36,363 | KES 200 | KES 200 |
Business Till transfers round out the changes. From 7 August, moving funds from a Till to an M PESA account or PayBill costs up to fifty percent less. The new Pay to Mobile and Pay to PayBill tariffs both scale down sharply at every transaction band, with the steepest cuts benefiting mid range transfers between KES 5,000 and KES 20,000, where charges roughly halve.
| Transaction Band (KES) | Pay to Mobile: Old / New | Pay to PayBill: Old / New |
|---|---|---|
| 501 to 1,000 | 13 / 7 | 10 / 5 |
| 5,001 to 7,500 | 78 / 39 | 42 / 21 |
| 15,001 to 20,000 | 105 / 53 | 57 / 29 |
| 45,001 to 250,000 | 108 / 54 | 108 / 54 |
Safaricom frames the revisions as consistent with Central Bank of Kenya pricing principles on fairness, transparency and competition.
Why the timing makes sense
The cuts land just months after Safaricom posted its strongest financial year on record. M PESA generated KES 183 billion in revenue for the year ended 31 March 2026, now accounting for 45.6 percent of Safaricom’s Kenya service revenue, up from 44.2 percent the year before. The merchant base grew 71 percent to 3.1 million, with most of that expansion coming from Pochi La Biashara, which grew 81.5 percent to 2.1 million tills, while Lipa na M PESA merchants grew 54.2 percent to 1.0 million. Pochi revenue nearly doubled, climbing 86 percent to KES 4.0 billion.
That growth was not built on high fees alone. Kadogo transactions, the small transfers and merchant payments that fall under free tariff bands, made up 17.1 billion transactions in the year, or 36.8 percent of all M PESA volumes. Merchant payments alone drove 43.6 percent of all growth in business payments revenue, with roughly 46 million free transactions processed every day. Cutting merchant costs further looks less like a discount and more like a continuation of the strategy that already fueled the platform’s growth.
The wider numbers underline how central M PESA has become to the group. Customers moved KES 41.7 trillion through the platform during the financial year, and total transaction volume rose 25.1 percent to 46.41 billion. Safaricom’s net income for the year climbed 67.3 percent to KES 99.7 billion, supported strongly by M PESA and data services performance.
A campaign built on more, not less
PATA MORE extends beyond merchant tariffs. Daily and monthly data bundles now offer significantly more volume at the same price, mobile money users get lower Pochi transaction costs, and Safaricom Fibre customers gain faster speeds alongside family sharing tools. Enterprise Fibre customers also receive built in cybersecurity features designed to block malicious sites and flag suspicious activity in real time.
CEO Peter Ndegwa tied the campaign to customer feedback rather than competitive pressure, saying the company continues to listen and respond with solutions that offer practical, everyday value, adding that PATA MORE is meant to help Safaricom show up for customers with care, simplicity and support when they need it most.
The campaign also folds into Safaricom’s Vision 2030 roadmap, which centers on embedding artificial intelligence across operations, growing the Ethiopian business and expanding M PESA’s financial services ecosystem. For millions of small traders who rely on Pochi and Lipa na M PESA to run daily operations, though, the more immediate story is simpler: transacting on M PESA is about to get noticeably cheaper.
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