Inside M-Pesa’s Tentative Transformation

Safaricom is transforming its M-Pesa platform to handle up to 8,000 transactions per second by the end of 2026, marking a major leap in scale and resilience. Meanwhile, Stanbic Bank is navigating profit declines in the first half of 2025 with a bold move to more than double its interim dividend.

These and more in today's edition of our newsletter. I am Brian from The Kenyan Wall Street

Inside M-Pesa’s Tentative Transformation

Here is what it takes to keep Kenya's biggest mobile money service alive and kicking…

By TKWS Team

In 2015, when M-Pesa’s operations came home to Kenya, it handled 616 transactions per second; a figure that then felt immense. Today, Safaricom’s mobile money engine is clocking 4,000 transactions every second, or roughly 345 million a day. By the close of 2026, that number is expected to double.

This shift is not merely a technological upgrade but a reimagining of scale itself. The new platform: cloud-native and fail-safe, runs on over 700 servers across production and disaster recovery environments. It can reroute traffic in under four minutes if catastrophe strikes.

Even at 1 a.m. on weekends, M-Pesa quietly hums along at 300 TPS, serving a sleepless economy. The database is capable of supporting 100,000 developers and tens of thousands of integration.

Felix Rop, the Head of Financial Services Technology, sees this evolution not as catch-up but as orchestration: building for future demand, not just present strain. Every minute of uptime matters, because every minute means 240,000 customer moments uninterrupted.

Watch the interview here 👇🏽

Stanbic’s Profits Slip…But Dividend it is!

By Harry Njuguna 

Stanbic Holdings Plc reported a dip in half-year profits, with net earnings falling to KSh 6.54 billion despite modest growth in non-interest income and rising dividends. Operating expenses surged 15.5%, tightening margins and lifting the cost-to-income ratio to 48.3%. At the subsidiary level, Stanbic Bank Kenya posted a 15% decline in profit before tax, weighed down by a steep 33% drop in non-interest income. Yet both the group and the bank more than doubled their interim dividends, a gesture of confidence amid contraction. Over the decade, Stanbic has grown its balance sheet fourfold, but recent results hint at the cost of scale in a slower economy. Read more >>>>>

Tax the Bottles - Court tells KRA

What essentially defines a raw product eligible for excise duty?

By Brian Nzomo 

In a ruling that could reshape how excise relief is applied, the High Court has sided with the taxman in declaring that bottles used to package liquor are not raw materials. The decision overturns a Tax Appeals Tribunal finding in favor of London Distillers and reinstates a multi-million tax bill. Justice Ng’ar ng’ar held that packaging, while commercially indispensable, is not part of the final excisable product’s substance. Read more here »»»»»

Ahead of the Curve : Premier Bank Bets on a Digital Revolution 

The Sharia-compliant financial institution has joined the digitalization fray in an interesting way…

By Brian Nzomo 

Premier Bank has launched a sweeping digital ecosystem, "Premier Connect," combining mobile apps, USSD, international remittances, and wearable tech from key fobs to Maasai bead bracelets.

With deep integration and a fully self-service model, the Somalia-headquartered lender is targeting Kenya’s mobile-first market with infrastructure it claims to have built entirely in-house. Its near-instant payments platform, Premier Tap, reflects a growing fintech trend: embedding finance into lifestyle. The bank’s strategy centers on eliminating the need for branches and disrupting physical point-of-sale systems through smartphone-based merchant tools. Backed by Mastercard and designed to appeal to the diaspora and SMEs, the rollout blends regulatory precision with tech flair. For a bank that only entered Kenya in 2023, it’s a bold challenge to legacy incumbents is a fascinating thing to watch. Read more here »»»»»

Capital Markets 

🧾 Buying NSE Stocks in Kenya: Beginner’s Guide

By Sylvia Jemutai

Thinking about buying stocks on the Nairobi Securities Exchange but not sure where to start? This beginner-friendly guide walks you through opening a CDS account, picking a licensed broker, and buying your first shares with as little as KSh 1,000. You’ll also learn how to avoid common rookie mistakes and build smart habits that grow your portfolio over time. Read the full guide here »»»»»

NSE Gainers & Losers 

Also Read 

Stories you missed 

♦️ Tech. The eCitizen platform has been exposed in a special audit as a fertile bed for fund diversions, massive overcharges, and systemic governance failures.

♦️ Capital Markets. Sameer Africa’s share price has surged from KSh 2.43 at the end of December 2024 to KSh 10.35 on August 5, representing a year-to-date gain of +326%

♦️ Social Media. Popular short video platform TikTok has undertaken one of its most aggressive digital cleanup efforts in Kenya by removing more than 450,000 videos and banning 43,000 accounts during the first quarter of 2025.

On your watchlist

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