Lipa Na M-Pesa in 2026: What 40M Users Means for Your Margins

Written by Carolyne Kigathi·2 March 2026·8 min read·GuideIntermediate

In this article

M-Pesa just crossed 40 million users — and your Till Number fees just became a serious cost centre
What this means for a business doing KSh 2M–20M revenue
Three moves smart Nairobi operators are making right now
How AskBiz shows you exactly which products are absorbing your M-Pesa charges
Four warning signs your M-Pesa costs are already eating your margin undetected
Your action plan for this week

Key Takeaways

M-Pesa hit 40 million users in 2026 — meaning your customers almost certainly pay via Till Number, and your transaction fees are now a line item you cannot ignore. At 0.5% per transaction (capped at KSh 200), a business doing KSh 2M/month in Lipa Na M-Pesa collections is handing Safaricom up to KSh 10,000 every single month. This week: pull your M-Pesa for Business statement, calculate your true fee-to-revenue ratio, and decide which product lines are quietly bleeding margin to mobile money charges.

M-Pesa just crossed 40 million users — and your Till Number fees just became a serious cost centre
What this means for a business doing KSh 2M–20M revenue
Three moves smart Nairobi operators are making right now
How AskBiz shows you exactly which products are absorbing your M-Pesa charges
Four warning signs your M-Pesa costs are already eating your margin undetected

M-Pesa just crossed 40 million users — and your Till Number fees just became a serious cost centre#

In April 2026, Safaricom confirmed M-Pesa crossed 40 million active customers in Kenya. That is not a vanity number. It means roughly 60% of the Kenyan population now transacts through a single mobile money rail — and for most SMEs in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, and Nakuru, Lipa Na M-Pesa is no longer a payment option. It is the payment option. Here is what changed in the past five years: In 2021, Lipa Na M-Pesa was still competing with cash at the till. By mid-2026, cash-dominant businesses are the exception. The density of Buy Goods Till numbers across Nairobi's Westlands, Gikomba, and Ngong Road corridors tells you everything. But adoption at scale creates a cost problem that most founders have not yet sat down to calculate. Safaricom's current Buy Goods merchant charge structure is straightforward: collections of KSh 200 and below are free. Anything above KSh 200 costs 0.5% of the transaction value, capped at KSh 200 per transaction. The break-even point — where the 0.5% hits the KSh 200 cap — is KSh 40,000 per transaction. For a retailer selling fast-moving consumer goods at KSh 500–KSh 5,000 per ticket, every single transaction is in the 0.5% band. This is not a rounding error. A business collecting KSh 1.5M per month through Lipa Na M-Pesa at an average ticket of KSh 2,000 is processing roughly 750 transactions — and paying up to KSh 7,500 per month in Till charges before accounting for any other payment cost. That is KSh 90,000 per year. Gone. And most founders cannot tell you that number off the top of their head.

What this means for a business doing KSh 2M–20M revenue#

Take a Kilimani-based beauty supply distributor doing KSh 4.5M per month in revenue. Roughly 70% of her collections — KSh 3.15M — come through her Lipa Na M-Pesa Buy Goods Till. The rest is bank transfer via Equity Bank or Cooperative Bank cheque from a handful of salon wholesale accounts. At 0.5% on collections above KSh 200, her monthly M-Pesa merchant fee is approximately KSh 15,750. Annualised: KSh 189,000 (around $1,460 USD). That is one month's salary for a junior stockroom assistant. It is not nothing. Now compound that with what is happening on the procurement side. Many of her Nairobi suppliers have also shifted to Lipa Na M-Pesa for receivables — which means her supply chain operates on the same fee rails. She is paying M-Pesa charges when she collects from salons, and her distributors are passing those costs back into their wholesale prices. For businesses operating in higher-volume, lower-margin categories — grocery retail, fast food, salon consumables, hardware — the 0.5% compresses an already thin margin. A Westlands kiosk-format grocer running at 12% gross margin and collecting KSh 800k per month through M-Pesa is losing over 4% of net margin to payment rails alone when M-Pesa charges are stacked against delivery fees and KRA VAT on taxable goods. The practical fix is not to abandon M-Pesa — that conversation is over. The fix is to know your true payment cost per product category and price accordingly. Right now, most founders are not doing that calculation. They set prices once and watch margin drift.

Three moves smart Nairobi operators are making right now#

**1. Separate your Till Number revenue by product category — today.** The M-Pesa for Business app (updated May 2026 on Google Play) gives you real-time statements broken down by transaction. Export the last 90 days. In a spreadsheet, tag each transaction to a product category. You will almost certainly find that some categories — typically low-ticket, high-volume lines — are contributing disproportionately to your fee bill relative to gross margin. A Nairobi electronics accessories seller found that phone cables (average KSh 350/transaction) cost him more in M-Pesa fees as a percentage of revenue than phone cases (average KSh 1,200/transaction). He repriced cables up KSh 20 across the board. Problem solved in 48 hours. **2. Use Paybill for B2B collections above KSh 10,000 — and train your wholesale buyers.** Lipa Na M-Pesa's Buy Goods Till is designed for consumer retail. For wholesale or B2B transactions above KSh 10,000, a Paybill number can offer better reconciliation and in some structures lower effective costs depending on your agreement with Safaricom or your aggregator (check with your Safaricom Business relationship manager or contact M-Pesa Business on 0722 002 100). Several Nairobi-based distributors supplying hotels and restaurants have shifted bulk orders to Paybill — and paired it with an Equity Bank EazzyBiz account for same-day settlement. **3. Set a monthly payment cost ratio target and track it.** Target: M-Pesa fees should not exceed 0.4% of gross revenue. If you are above that, your pricing or channel mix needs adjustment. Write this number down. Put it in a Google Sheet. Review it on the first Monday of every month — not quarterly, monthly. Markets move too fast.

How AskBiz shows you exactly which products are absorbing your M-Pesa charges#

A founder running a Nairobi multi-branch pharmacy chain opens AskBiz and types: *'Which of my product lines has the worst margin after M-Pesa charges this quarter?'* AskBiz pulls her M-Pesa STK Push CSV export (uploaded or auto-synced), matches transaction values against her WooCommerce or Shopify product catalogue, and runs the margin calculation with Till fees applied per transaction band. The output is direct: *'Your OTC supplements category (average ticket KSh 380) is generating KSh 1.2M in revenue this quarter but absorbing KSh 5,900 in M-Pesa charges — a 0.49% fee rate. Your prescription fulfilment category (average ticket KSh 2,800) is absorbing just 0.18% in fees on KSh 3.4M revenue. Your true margin gap between these two categories is 2.3 percentage points wider than your pricing model assumes.'* From that single answer, she knows to review OTC supplement pricing before the next restock cycle. She does not need an accountant. She does not need to wait until end-of-quarter management accounts. She asks, she gets the number, she acts. AskBiz's CFO Dashboard also tracks her M-Pesa fee trend month-on-month — so if Safaricom adjusts its charge structure or her transaction mix shifts, she gets a proactive alert via WhatsApp before the margin damage compounds.

Four warning signs your M-Pesa costs are already eating your margin undetected#

Watch for these in the next 30 days: **1. Your gross revenue is growing but net cash in your M-Pesa for Business wallet is not keeping pace.** Log into the M-Pesa for Business app and compare last month's total collections to net withdrawals. The gap includes fees. **2. You have raised prices once in the past 12 months but margin has not recovered.** If pricing went up 8% but net margin stayed flat, payment costs and supplier pass-throughs are likely absorbing the increase. **3. Your average transaction value is falling.** Lower ticket sizes mean more transactions in the 0.5% fee band. Check your M-Pesa statement for the distribution of transaction sizes — if more are clustering between KSh 200 and KSh 1,000, your effective fee rate is rising. **4. Your Till reconciliation takes more than 30 minutes per week.** Manual reconciliation time is a hidden cost. If your cashier or accountant is spending hours matching M-Pesa SMS confirmations to sales records, that is an operational drain that compounds every month.

Your action plan for this week#

**Before Friday:** Download your last 90 days of M-Pesa for Business transaction history from the app (Settings → Statements → Export). Calculate your total Till charges paid. Divide by total collections. If that ratio is above 0.45%, you have a pricing or channel mix problem to fix before Q3. **Set up once:** Create a dedicated Google Sheet column for 'M-Pesa fee per product category' and update it monthly from your statement export. Tag at least your top five revenue-generating SKUs. This takes 45 minutes to build and saves you hours of confusion at every restock decision. **Track monthly:** Your M-Pesa fee-to-revenue ratio. Benchmark target: below 0.4% of gross monthly revenue. If you cross 0.5%, it triggers a pricing review — no exceptions. Set a calendar reminder for the first Monday of each month. This is the single metric that catches margin drift before it shows up in your bank balance.

📊 By The Numbers

40 million60%0.5%70%$1,460