We’ve been tracking Safaricom’s ambition to build a true super app since last year, and following a quiet rollout of public testing invites last month, the company has finally pulled back the curtain. At day two of the ongoing Safaricom Decode 4.0 event, the vision materialized on stage. Say goodbye to app juggling: Safaricom is officially merging the MySafaricom and M-PESA apps into a single, unified experience dubbed My OneApp.
Taking the stage to walk us through the new interface, Safaricom’s Super App team, comprising Felix Kimura, Paul Kamau, Gakenia Gathura, and Peter Gichangi, showcased exactly why this merger is so heavily anticipated. For years, I’ve found myself (and I know I’m not alone here) constantly bouncing between the M-PESA app to handle heavy-duty payments and the MySafaricom app for basic account and data management.
My OneApp structurally fixes this duplicated effort. It brings those fragmented user journeys into a single, seamless flow, meaning you can manage your data, buy airtime, and pay merchants without ever switching screens.
But this isn’t just a fresh coat of paint. At its core, My OneApp relies on a robust mini-app layer. Instead of downloading a dozen different apps for your favorite local services, businesses, and developers can embed their offerings directly into Safaricom’s ecosystem. The long-term goal here is fascinating: Safaricom eventually wants to bridge this unified consumer interface with its enterprise-focused merchant apps, allowing consumer demand and business services to seamlessly meet in the middle.
What really caught my eye during the Decode demo, however, was the roadmap for what comes next. Future iterations of My OneApp will heavily prioritize personalization. The interface is being trained to adapt to your behavior, proactively surfacing recurring activities like that weekly money transfer to your parents or your daily data bundle purchase. The team even teased voice-based interactions, aiming to replicate the frictionless simplicity of Google Search, allowing you to bypass menus entirely with a simple spoken command.
If you want to take the new platform for a spin, early access is already underway. Currently, the rollout is limited to Android users, though iOS support is officially in the pipeline. Safaricom is aggressively collecting on-device feedback to iron out the kinks before a wider release. Having watched this project evolve from a distant rumor to a tangible product, it’s clear this is the most significant overhaul to Safaricom’s mobile strategy in years.
