M-KOPA Kenya has issued more than $1.6 billion in credit to customers in the country, marking one of the largest financing footprints in Kenya's consumer market.
The company released its first Kenya-focused impact report, showing it has served 4.8 million customers since launching solar home systems in 2010. Many of these users had no access to bank financing before joining the platform.
Smartphones now drive most of the company's activity. M-KOPA says 4.5 million Kenyans have acquired a handset through its pay-as-you-go model, including more than 2 million first-time phone owners. The company reports that 37% of users accessed their first formal loan through M-KOPA, and 68% received their first health insurance product via its "More than a Phone" bundle.
The company paid KES 3.79 billion in taxes last year. Its assembly line in Nairobi has produced two million devices and offers training for technicians as part of a broader push toward local manufacturing.
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M-KOPA employs 1,320 staff and works with 14,000 sales agents nationwide. It has also financed 5,000 electric motorbikes under its expanding EV unit. The company says its pay-as-you-go structure reduces over-indebtedness, though its device-locking mechanism remains a point of debate.
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Key Takeaways
M-KOPA's rise highlights the growing role of asset-financing platforms in Africa's consumer credit market, where traditional banks struggle to lend to low-income or informal workers. By pairing hardware with credit scoring based on daily repayment behaviour, M-KOPA has effectively built one of the region's largest alternative credit datasets. This has allowed it to extend loans for smartphones, cash advances, insurance, and now electric motorbikes, creating a model that blends credit, payments, and device access. The milestone also shows how smartphones have become an entry point for broader financial inclusion. In Kenya, where feature-phone users remain significant, M-KOPA's handset financing is pushing millions into the digital economy. The expansion into EVs signals an effort to capture new asset classes that banks consider too risky. The report lands as regulators scrutinise digital lenders, making M-KOPA's approach to limiting hidden charges and capping debt more central to policy debates on safe consumer credit.
