Fuliza borrowers rise to 18.1m as merchant loans sour
Safaricom more than doubled the number of Kenyans eligible to borrow on Fuliza to 18.1 million in the year to March 2026, opening the M-PESA overdraft to 11 million customers who previously had no credit limit.
The borrowing base stood at seven million a year earlier, the telco’s 2026 Sustainable Business Report shows.
Safaricom attributes the jump to the introduction of what it calls a multitenancy model. The report does not explain how the model works.
Consumer credit customers on M-PESA rose to 17.7 million from 7.9 million.
The report concedes that digital credit can increase financial stress and over-indebtedness if it is not provided responsibly.
Safaricom says it uses data-driven and AI-enabled models, with validation and human oversight, to assess eligibility, affordability and risk. It adjusts limits where repayment behaviour weakens.
The strain is clearest in merchant lending. Taasi Till, part of Safaricom’s merchant credit portfolio, has a non-performing loan ratio of eight percent.
Those results are “informing tighter exposure controls, enhanced behavioural scorecards and a shift towards more purpose-led credit at the point of payment in FY27,” the report states. Resetting the merchant credit portfolio is listed among the company’s FY27 priorities.
“M-PESA has fundamentally expanded financial inclusion, but inclusion alone is not enough,” Chief Executive Peter Ndegwa said in the report.
Financial health, he said, depends on customers being able to save, invest and insure themselves against shocks.
The report does not disclose the total value lent through Fuliza, the overdraft’s default rate or the average loan size.
DigiFarm, Safaricom’s agriculture platform, disbursed Sh969.8 million ($7.5 million) in 177,200 loans, up from Sh945 million across 169,000 loans a year earlier.
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