On 8 May 2026, the High Court of Kenya ordered Safaricom PLC to pay a Kenyan innovator KES 1.4 billion in damages and an indefinite royalty of 0.5% of gross M-PESA revenue, after finding the telco infringed copyright in developing M-PESA Go and the Manage Child Account feature. Safaricom has secured a 30-day suspension of the judgment and will appeal at the Court of Appeal, meaning the findings below remain subject to appellate review.
The plaintiff is Peter Nthei Muoki, working with his company Beluga Limited. The case is Civil Suit E407 of 2022, heard at the Milimani Commercial Courts before Justice Josephine Wayua Wambua Mong’are. Safaricom is the defendant; Huawei Technologies (Kenya) Company Ltd was joined as an interested party.
We’ve tracked M-PESA Go since the November 2022 launch, the stripped-down M-PESA for children aged 10 to 17 that runs on USSD code *334# and lets parents add up to four junior accounts. We also covered the announcement of the plans for it back in May 2022, when then-Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa first mentioned them at the FY2022 results. The court has now found that the structure of that product traces back to a Kenyan developer’s documented design.
What Muoki built, and how he pitched it
Muoki started work on what he called the M-Teen Mobile Wallet USSD Code in October 2020. The concept targeted two groups: teenagers aged 13 to 17, and young adults aged 18 to 24. Parents would set spending limits, monitor transactions, and manage accounts through USSD menus, the type any basic phone can run.
He registered the design with the Kenya Copyright Board. On 13 March 2021, he sent the concept to Sylvia Mulinge, then Safaricom’s Chief Customer Officer. She did not respond. Muoki kept pushing and reached Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, who had just been appointed Managing Director of M-PESA Africa effective 1 April 2021 while continuing to act as Safaricom’s Chief Financial Services Officer.
In May 2021, Lopokoiyit replied that the product was not workable because teenagers between 13 and 17 do not hold ID cards, and Central Bank of Kenya approval would be required. Muoki pushed for a face-to-face meeting. The two met on 22 June 2021 at Mediterraneo Restaurant in Junction Mall, Nairobi. The court record indicates Lopokoiyit said Safaricom had been considering something similar and offered to link Muoki with a third party.
Seventeen months later, on 26 November 2022, Safaricom launched M-PESA Go. The product targets ages 10 to 17. The court found its menu structure and parental-control features were substantially similar to what Muoki had pitched.
What Safaricom argued, and how the court treated each point
Safaricom’s defence had two main planks. First, that parental-control wallets are not new; banks already let parents link children to their accounts. Second, that Safaricom had been working on its own version since September 2020, citing a Huawei proposal dated 22 September 2020 and a verbal request the company said came from the CBK governor about minors and betting platforms.
The court accepted the first point in principle. The general idea of a youth wallet with parental controls is not, on its own, protectable. Justice Mong’are wrote: “Whereas I can agree that the idea for a youth/teen mobile wallet is a common, unprotectable idea within the industry… in this case, I can draw an inference that Safaricom generated and initiated its product after obtaining the idea and its expression from the Plaintiffs.” What was protectable, the judge ruled, was Muoki’s specific expression: the documented sequence of USSD menus, commands and system responses. That structure was held to qualify as a literary work under the Copyright Act.
The court was not persuaded by the Huawei defence. The judge described the Huawei proposal as appearing to be “a belated attempt to create a paper trail to defeat the Plaintiffs’ claim,” noting Safaricom did not produce the final Functional Requirements Specification document. On the CBK governor explanation, the judge said: “It is not the duty of the CBK Governor to advise Safaricom on product features or any other entity for that matter,” questioning why a major telecommunications firm would act on undocumented verbal instructions.
The judge also criticised Safaricom’s conduct during the case itself, describing shifting explanations, missing documents and continued product rollout during litigation as “falling short of the standards expected of a market leader.” Safaricom is expected to challenge these findings on appeal.
How the damages were set
The court declined to issue an injunction. Shutting M-PESA Go down would, in the judge’s words, “cause disproportionate disruption” to the millions of Kenyans now using it. Instead, the court ordered a compulsory licence.
Damages were set at 1% of M-PESA’s FY2024 revenue, calculated at KES 1,400,067,000. The judge described it as a conservative calculation and “actually a negligible cost to Safaricom for using the plaintiff’s copyrighted work.” An ongoing royalty of 0.5% of gross M-PESA revenue runs from 31 March 2025, for as long as the feature or any substantially similar parent-child functionality remains in operation.
That ongoing royalty is the bigger number. Safaricom’s M-PESA Kenya revenue for the year ended 31 March 2025 was KES 161.1 billion, which would put the FY2025 royalty at about KES 805 million. Safaricom’s FY2026 results released 7 May 2026 show M-PESA revenue climbing to KES 182.7 billion, which would put the next royalty at roughly KES 913 million. We unpacked Safaricom’s full FY26 results in an interactive widget here. At current M-PESA growth rates, annual royalty payments would cross KES 1 billion within two financial years if the ruling stands.
Why this matters beyond the headline number
For Kenyan developers, the ruling gives weight to a long-debated question about pitch meetings. Detailed product documentation, including USSD flows, menu sequences and system responses, can attract copyright protection as literary work. Registering with KECOBO creates evidence. Pitching a concept to a corporation creates a record the corporation will be held to.
The principle is the idea-expression distinction, a foundational concept in copyright law internationally. The WIPO Copyright Treaty, which Kenya is party to, sets out that copyright protects “expressions and not ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such.” The judgment applies that principle to a software design pitched to a big company.
For Safaricom, the ruling lands in a year when M-PESA already contributes 45.6% of Kenya service revenue. The shareholding has just shifted too, with Vodacom rising to 55% as the Treasury cut its stake to 20%. If upheld on appeal, every shilling M-PESA Go earns, directly or through the transaction volume it drives, will carry a permanent half-percent line item payable to the plaintiff.
The judge’s closing line was addressed to both sides:
“For innovators, it demonstrates that even David can prevail against Goliath when evidence is marshalled properly and truth is on his side. For corporations, it is a reminder that good ideas do not only originate in boardrooms. When an unsolicited proposal is received and rejected, the corporation must ensure that subsequent internal developments are genuinely independent and can be documented as such.”
For now, the appeal clock is running. If the Court of Appeal upholds the ruling, the royalty meter runs with it. We will update this story when Safaricom files its appeal and when the company issues a public statement.
