Safaricom has announced a significant upgrade to its M-PESA developer platform, Daraja, with the company's chief financial services officer, Esther Waititu, disclosing that 25% of all M-PESA transactions are now conducted via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
This milestone represents a significant shift in Kenya's digital economy, as businesses increasingly integrate mobile money directly into their systems rather than depending primarily on manual consumer-to-business payments.
The latest data, disclosed by Waititu at an event in Nairobi on Tuesday, November 25, 2025, demonstrates how completely the M-PESA ecosystem has grown integrated into the operations of banks, fintechs, and retail enterprises.
Safaricom's online portal and platform, Daraja (which means "bridge" in Swahili), enables software developers and enterprises to incorporate M-PESA directly into their own websites, apps, and systems. The portal has been fully upgraded to version 3.0.
“Daraja 3.0 is a gateway to the next frontier of fintech,” Waititu said, noting that the 25% figure represents a critical pivot where developers are now as vital to M-PESA's growth.
The Daraja platform serves as the portal for over 105,000 external developers and 66,000 integrations, allowing them to plug M-PESA payment capabilities into websites, apps, and business systems.
The upgrade to Daraja 3.0 addresses long-standing developer concerns regarding speed, documentation, and support.
Key features of the upgraded backbone include a move to a cloud-native architecture designed to eliminate downtime during maintenance and a redesigned testing environment that allows developers to simulate complex transaction flows before going live.
The new upgrade also brings new APIs designed to enable Internet of Things devices to communicate and initiate payments autonomously.
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