Fuliza lent KES 1.16 trillion in the six months to 30th September 2026. A year earlier it lent KES 629 billion, so that’s up 84%. Spread over the half, it’s about KES 6.3 billion a day. The figures are in Safaricom’s half-year results, released on 5th November, and we covered the rest of those results last week.
Fuliza is M-PESA’s overdraft. If you send money or pay for something and your balance is short, Fuliza covers the gap up to your limit, then takes it back from the next money that lands in your M-PESA. Banks put up the money. Safaricom runs the service and takes a share of the fees. Its Fuliza revenue came to KES 4.9 billion in the half, up 86%. Nearly all of the KES 1.16 trillion was repaid in the same six months, so the same money was lent out many times.
More people got limits, then borrowed more often
Safaricom counted 17.2 million different Fuliza users in the six months to September, against 9.1 million a year earlier. Most of that jump came in the six months to March, when Safaricom’s count of customers across all its loan products went from 9.5 million to 18 million. In the year to March 2026, 11 million customers who had a Fuliza limit of zero were given access to credit, and Safaricom puts that down to a “multitenancy model”.
In software, multitenancy means one system serving several separate clients. Safaricom’s May results presentation says it moved its lending system to multitenancy, and that Fintech 2.0, its M-PESA upgrade, gave Fuliza three times the throughput. We think the clients are the lenders. Safaricom’s results booklets now name Sidian Bank as a third Fuliza lender with NCBA and KCB, though its annual report still names two.
Since March, the number of borrowers across those loan products has levelled off, from 18 million to 17.5 million in September. They borrowed more often, though. Worked out per day, Fuliza lent about KES 4.6 billion in the six months to March and KES 6.3 billion in the six months to September.
The amounts are getting smaller. The average overdraft fell to KES 192.10 from KES 254.60 a year earlier. Divide what was lent by that average and you get about 6 billion overdrafts in six months. That’s roughly one in every five M-PESA transactions, just under Safaricom’s 6.14 billion count for its whole lending, savings and insurance line. We think that’s also why fewer M-PESA transactions were free this time, 53% against 60.3%: Fuliza overdrafts are counted as chargeable, and that line supplied about two thirds of the growth in transactions.
What a small overdraft costs
Safaricom’s Fuliza page, last updated in June 2025, lists two charges. There’s a one-off access fee of 1% of what you overdraw. Then, from the next midnight, there’s a daily fee on whatever you still owe, plus 20% excise duty on that fee:
| You owe (KES) | Daily fee with excise (KES) |
|---|---|
| Up to 100 | 0 |
| 101 to 500 | 3 |
| 501 to 1,000 | 6 |
| 1,001 to 1,500 | 21.60 |
| 1,501 to 2,500 | 24 |
| 2,501 to 70,000 | 30 |
A KES 192 overdraft pays the same KES 3 a day as a KES 500 one, so it costs more for each shilling. Clear KES 192 before midnight and you pay the access fee, KES 1.92. Leave it a week and the table puts the total at KES 22.92, about 12%. A KES 800 overdraft left for a week comes to KES 50, about 6%.
Those figures may overstate the cost. When Safaricom cut Fuliza fees in 2022, it said overdrafts of KES 1,000 and below would get the daily fee free for the first three days. If that still applies, the KES 192 week costs KES 13.92, about 7%, and the KES 800 week about KES 32. Neither the fee page nor the Fuliza terms mention it now.
Safaricom’s own share is small. It earns about KES 4.20 for every KES 1,000 Fuliza lends. In the six months to September 2022, the last half before those fee cuts took effect on 1st October, it earned about KES 10.80. Smaller overdrafts and Safaricom’s revenue share with the banks, which it doesn’t publish, move that figure too.
Repayments fell just behind
Fuliza customers repaid KES 1,153.3 billion in the half, against KES 1,157.5 billion lent, or 99.6%. In each of the two years to March 2026, repayments ran ahead of lending, at 101.5%. In the year to March 2024 they were 96.1%.
So Fuliza lent about KES 4.2 billion more than it collected over the six months. Some of that could be overdrafts taken late in September that were still open when the period ended.
Neither Safaricom nor the banks publish how much of Fuliza goes unpaid, including among the people given new limits. NCBA, one of the lenders, gave out KES 819 billion in digital loans in the six months to June, up 26.9%, but its results don’t name Fuliza, so that figure can’t be tied to it.
What an overdraft costs you depends on how long you leave it: very little if you clear it the same day, and a lot more, for each shilling, if a small one sits for a week.
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