The proliferation of micro traders such as food vendors, kiosk owners, boda boda operators and second-hand clothes sellers has pushed adoption of M-Pesa’s Pochi la Biashara wallets ahead of business tills.
The product, which allows traders to receive and separate business funds from personal cash, has surpassed business tills under Lipa na M-Pesa by addressing key merchant pain points such as payment reversals.
Disclosures by Safaricom Plc, the owner and operator of the M-Pesa mobile money platform, show the number of merchants using Pochi has doubled that of business tills.
The number of merchants using Pochi reached 2.1 million in the financial year ended March 2026, up from 1.1 million a year earlier.
In contrast, merchants using Lipa na M-Pesa business tills grew more slowly to one million from 700,000 over the same period.
Three years ago, Pochi had fewer than half as many merchants as business tills, with 292,600 users compared with 606,700 tills.
The higher number of Pochi users also reflects the larger population of micro businesses in the economy compared with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are more likely to use business tills.
Micro appeal
Safaricom launched Pochi la Biashara in 2020 as part of its strategy to drive the adoption of digital financial services among micro-entrepreneurs by allowing them to keep business earnings separate from personal funds in a wallet linked to their M-Pesa account.
“The product was designed to address key pain points for merchants identified through Safaricom’s own customer feedback, such as mixing personal and business funds and frustrations around customer payment reversals,” the GSM Association (GSMA) said in a report assessing the impact of the product on entrepreneurs.
Pochi’s key features include dual wallets, Lipa na Pochi, which allows merchants to pay directly using the wallet, airtime sales and direct agent withdrawals.
The product does not allow payment reversals, protecting merchants from customers reversing completed transactions.
Merchants also receive mini-statements, access to working capital linked to business activity through Taasi loans, and savings and investment options via the Ziidi Trader platform and the Ziidi Money Market Fund (MMF).
Signing up is straightforward because merchants do not require a new SIM card or till number.
In contrast, merchants using Lipa na M-Pesa business tills must obtain a dedicated till SIM card that cannot be used for other transactions.
Revenue gap
Despite having more merchants on Pochi, Safaricom generates more revenue from business tills, signalling higher average earnings from the Lipa na M-Pesa product.
Revenue from business tills stood at Sh9.3 billion in the 12 months to March 2026, compared with Sh4 billion from Pochi.
Pochi revenue, however, grew at a faster pace, rising 86 percent from Sh2.2 billion in the previous year. Revenue from business tills increased 21.7 percent from Sh7.6 billion over the same period.
Safaricom considers Pochi an increasingly important product within its mobile money business despite its smaller revenue base.
“Pochi la Biashara is becoming an increasingly important product in Safaricom’s M-Pesa suite and has generated high-margin revenue streams for Safaricom, with ongoing feature upgrades that give a strong competitive edge,” the GSMA report adds.
