Starting January 2026, buying shares on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) will be so easy. Ziidi Trader, is the platform, in Mpesa app, that will allow every person to buy shares at the comfort of their home. After starting its pilot program in 2024, Ziidi trader is finally wrapping up its pilot phase, and rolling it out to every person who has an mpesa app in their phone.
As of September 2025, Ziidi had 1.15 million customers, representing around 47.9% of the 2.4 million individual investors in unit trust schemes, according to the June 2025 register of the Capital Markets Authority (CMA).
This is a great challenge for any Kenyan who is not already on the platform.
So How will this platform work?
Well, Ziidi Trader will allow deposits and withdrawals to be made directly through M-Pesa. This will significantly reduce entry barriers for retail investors and make access to capital markets easier. Investors trade through an omnibus account structure. In simple terms, Omnibus Account Structure is a pool of multiple investors’ funds put into single accounts managed by licensed brokers operating in the background.
Through Ziidi you will be able to browse listed companies, place buy or sell orders, and settle transactions instantly through M-Pesa. The money comes out of your wallet when you buy and goes back in when you sell. No separate brokerage account is required at the entry stage.
According to NSE Chief Executive Frank Mwiti, this approach will finally crack open retail investor participation. Between 2023 and 2025, the number of active investors at the NSE grew by just 0.2%, adding only 2,621 traders to reach 1.3 million total.
For the longest time, investing in shares meant finding a stockbroker, filling out know-your-customer forms, opening a trading account, and wading through a process that felt designed to keep regular people out. Ziidi Trader eliminates most of that friction.
Read: Mpesa Charges
This initiative builds on the success of the Ziidi Money Market Fund (MMF), launched in December 2024, which enables Kenyans to invest directly from their mobile phones, with free deposits and withdrawals via M-Pesa and a minimum investment amount set at KES 100.
The NSE briefly crossed the KES 3.044 trillion valuation mark in November 2025, but even with this success, only a few new investors have joined the market.
What most people might not know is that this development comes at an especially important time because stock investment is a good area to invest in. You can be able to diversify your investment from traditional ways like real estate, and bank deposits.
If you are interested in investing your money in ziidi, your biggest assignment right now would be understanding how to invest in the best shares in the market. How you can analyse different companies, their past performance, profitability, expansion, risk and many others.
As NSE’s targets 9 million active retail investors by 2029, Ziidi trader gives Kenyans a good opportunity to join in.
The biggest challenge will go to stockbrokers who have so far accused the NSE of trying to cut them out of the business entirely.
For Safaricom, Ziidi Trader will open another revenue stream and in 2025 it earned KES 100 million from the Ziidi MMF, about 0.6% of the fund’s asset base.
Betty is a qualified teacher with a Bachelor of Education (Arts). In addition, she is a registered Certified Public Accountant. She has been teaching and offering part-time accounting services for the last 10 years. She is passionate about education, accounting, writing, and traveling.