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M-Pesa changed Kenya

Safaricom launched M-Pesa in 2007 into a country full of phones and short on banks. That mattered more than any slogan.

The product was simple. Dial a code. Enter a PIN. Send money to a phone number. Cash in at a shop. Cash out the same way. No bank account. No minimum balance. Fees low enough to beat a trip to the bank.

The scale is hard to overstate. By 2026, more than 40 million people in Kenya used M-Pesa. In 2023/24 it processed about $309 billion. For most adults, M-Pesa is not an app. It is the default rail.

It also helped. Traders got paid. Families sent school fees fast. Diaspora workers moved money home without losing a large cut to remittance firms. M-Pesa earned its place.

But inclusion is not privacy. The same system that moved money for everyone logged everything.

M-Pesa comes with surveillance

M-Pesa is not neutral infrastructure. It is a Safaricom product inside Kenyan law, and the Kenyan state has a stake in Safaricom. Every transfer creates a record: sender, recipient, amount, time, and agent location where cash was involved.

Safaricom's own terms say it may share that data with police, the Central Bank, tax authorities, anti-corruption bodies, and other AMLAnti-Money Laundering rules require financial institutions and crypto platforms to monitor customers, flag transactions, and report activity to regulators.Glossary → agencies. The bar is low. The user is not told when records are accessed.

That matters in any country. It matters more in one where journalists, opposition figures, and civil society groups already work under pressure. A full payment graph is not just a fraud tool. It is a map of relationships.

Safaricom now masks part of a number on some confirmation messages. That helps with shoulder surfing. It does nothing to change what Safaricom stores or what the government can request.

Kenya already had a crypto market

Kenya did not need a lecture on crypto. People were already using it.

The drivers were practical: a young population, decent mobile connectivity, a weak shilling, and heavy remittance flows. If savings in KES keep shrinking and cross-border transfers stay expensive, people look for alternatives.

Remittances make the case obvious. Kenya received $4.94 billion in 2024. Traditional rails can take days and charge 5 to 10 percent. Lightning settles in seconds for almost nothing.

Kenyan P2P trading was active long before regulators tried to formalize the sector. Platforms changed. The habit stayed.

Machankura puts Bitcoin on feature phones

This is the access problem in one line: many Africans still use feature phones. A wallet that needs iOS, Android, and mobile data misses a huge share of the market.

Machankura was built for the phones people already own. It does not need an app store, a browser, or a data plan.

Machankura, built by South African developer Kgothatso Ngako, runs over USSD. In Kenya you dial *483*8333#, set a PIN, and get a Lightning wallet linked to your number. You can send, receive, and check balance from the menu on the phone.

Under the hood, Africa's Talking routes the USSD session to Machankura's servers, which talk to the Lightning Network. The phone only needs carrier access. No mobile data. No smartphone.

Machankura works in several African countries through the same model. The dial code changes by country. The point stays the same: instant Bitcoin on basic phones.

The privacy gap

The honest caveat: Machankura is custodial. Machankura can see wallet activity and could be forced to hand it over. That is still a different risk from M-Pesa, where Safaricom holds the full domestic payment graph and already has the legal pipeline to state agencies.

If you have a smartphone and know what you are doing, self-custody is stronger. Machankura matters because it reaches people who do not have that hardware.

Kenya's legal position in 2026

Kenya moved from warnings to regulation faster than many neighbors. The 2025 Virtual Asset Service Providers Act sets rules for licensed crypto businesses.

Under it:

• The CBK oversees stablecoins and virtual assets used as payment instruments.
• The Capital Markets Authority supervises exchanges, brokers, and market operators.
• Licensed VASPs must establish a physical office in Kenya, appoint a board of at least three natural persons, segregate client funds, and comply with KYC and AML requirements.
• Independent IT audits are required for licensed operators.

The practical split is clear. Centralized exchanges will face full KYC. P2P Bitcoin trades and USSD tools like Machankura sit in a greyer space, and no public enforcement action against them had been documented as of March 2026.

Why this matters

Financial privacy sounds abstract until politics gets rough. Then the payment graph starts to matter.

Kenya has seen electoral violence, pressure on journalists and opposition figures, and lethal force against protest movements. In that setting, transaction history is not just accounting data. It can reveal donors, organizers, lawyers, and networks.

Outside politics, the use cases are ordinary:

• Remittances: send money from the US or UK to Kenya without paying wire operators a heavy cut, and without routing the whole flow through M-Pesa records.
• Savings against shilling inflation: hold part of your savings outside KES.
• Cross-border trade: send value around East Africa when bank access is weak and M-Pesa corridors are limited.
• Access for the unbanked: use a money rail that works on the phone already in your pocket.

Getting started

M-Pesa still does its job well

None of this means M-Pesa is a bad product. It is fast, cheap inside Kenya, accepted almost everywhere, and familiar to nearly every adult.

The point is narrower. M-Pesa should not be the only rail. A country where one system logs nearly every transaction has a power problem, even if that system works well.

Cash used to make small private payments normal. Mobile money replaced that convenience and removed most of the privacy. Machankura does not replace M-Pesa. It gives people another option on the same class of phones.

Cunicula is editorially independent and takes no funding from exchanges, mobile operators, financial institutions, or governments. Sources include Safaricom annual reports and terms, Machankura documentation, public interviews with Kgothatso Ngako, Chainalysis, CBK remittance data, GSMA, and the Kenya Virtual Asset Service Providers Act 2025. Laws change. Check the current position before acting.