In November 2012, Safaricom partnered NCBA Bank and came up with a "revolutionary" banking product, M-Shwari, which allows M-Pesa customers to save and borrow money through mobile phone while earning interest on money saved tapping into an underdeveloped financial services market.

[15] Bob Collymore took over at Safaricom in November 2010, replacing Michael Joseph who went on to serve in the telco giant's board as the Chairman.

Collymore was also at the forefront in leading the charge against regulatory efforts to clip the company's wings due to its size and dominance.

After a two-year battle with cancer, Bob, the longest-serving executive died on July 1, 2019, leaving behind a company with doubled user base and profits increased by 380%.

[22] Safaricom was the first company in Kenya to possess 3G Internet technology with the recent success of 4G / LTE connectivity currently in all major Kenyan cities.

[25] Safaricom launched the Kipokezi service in May 2000 that enabled its subscribers to send and receive email and online chat through standard mobile phones.

Prior to the service fewer than one in ten Kenyans had accessed the Internet but the Kipokezi launch allowed more than a third of the population to exchange email and online chat messages.

[27] Ndegwa, who is the CEO of the company pointed out that they were targeting 1 million customers with plans of rolling the service to other countries depending on its initial success.

M-PESA was originally designed as a system to allow microfinance-loan repayments to be made by phone, reducing the costs associated with handling cash.

This is in contrast to the preferred system before where money was sent by a porter, usually a friend, relative or bus crew, to the intended recipient.

M-PESA was first launched by the Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom, where Vodafone was technically a minority shareholder (40%), in March 2007.

M-PESA quickly captured a significant market share for cash transfers and grew to 17 million subscribers by December 2011 in Kenya alone.

In December 2008, a group of banks reportedly lobbied the Kenyan finance minister to audit M-PESA, in an effort to at least slow the growth of the service.

Contributing factors here include the exceptionally high cost of sending money by other methods; the dominant market position of Safaricom; the regulator's initial decision to allow the scheme to proceed on an experimental basis, without formal approval; a clear and effective marketing campaign (“Send money home”); an efficient system to move cash around behind the scenes; and, the post-election violence in the country in early 2008.

Some Kenyans regarded M-Pesa as a safer place to store their money than the banks, which were entangled in ethnic disputes.

Having established a base of initial users, M-Pesa then benefited from network effects: the more people who used it, the more it made sense for others to sign up for it.

M-PESA customers can access the service by dialling *840# >Accept terms and conditions to Opt in > Select send money abroad on mySafaricom App.

M-Pesa has been slow to gain a toehold in the South African market compared to Vodacom's projections that it would sign up 10 million users in the following three years.

This comes as no surprise as South Africa is well known for being ahead of financial institutions globally in terms of maturity and technological innovation.

M-Pesa was launched in Tanzania by Vodacom in 2008 but its initial ability to attract customers fell short of expectations.

In 2010, the International Finance Corporation released a report which explored many of these issues in greater depth and analyzed the strategic changes that Vodacom has implemented to improve their market position.

Using the *400# (USSD) facility allows Vodafone customers to avail of the benefits of M-Pesa without having a smartphone or a data connection.

The reports caused a stir which led to the summoning of its CEO Michael Joseph to appear before the PIC "Public Investment Committee", where he denied knowing who the other shareholder is.

[37] According the article, Safaricom CDRs used to locate its subscribers are routinely accessed contrary to due process and procedure, e.g. without police occurrence book entries or occurrence book entries obtained informally then used to track and either abduct or kill specific safaricom subscribers.

[39] On 15th November 2024, various civil society organisations including the Kenya Human Rights Commission and Muslims for Human Rights demanded that Safaricom address the specific allegations regarding passing CDRs to security agencies without court orders, manipulation and falsification of records, failing to hand over data regarding extra-judicial actions by state forces, retention of data that Safaricom claimed to have deleted, and developing software with British company Neural Technologies Limited to grant security agencies unfettered access to private consumer data used to track and profile safaricom subscribers.