Photo: Erasmus Kamugisha / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Kestrel Capital and Safaricom have received a 2026 Global Banking & Finance Review award for ZiiDi Trader, the M-PESA-based service opening a new mobile route into Kenyan share trading.
Recognition for mobile market access
Global Banking & Finance Review named Kestrel Capital (East Africa), working with Safaricom, winner of its Excellence in Innovation – Mobile Trading Platform (ZiiDi Trader) Kenya 2026 award. The award listing confirms the firms as recipients, while the publication’s announcement was posted on 2 October.
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ZiiDi Trader was launched in February 2026 through a partnership involving Safaricom, the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) and Kestrel Capital. It enables eligible users to buy and sell NSE-listed shares through the M-PESA app, combining a familiar mobile-money interface with regulated securities-market infrastructure.
Kestrel Capital serves as the executing broker for trades conducted through the platform. Safaricom supplies the digital channel and M-PESA ecosystem, while the NSE provides the market on which shares are traded.
Why it matters
For Kenya, the award is recognition of a home-grown attempt to lower long-standing barriers to share ownership. Opening a conventional brokerage account, completing verification and learning a separate trading system can discourage first-time investors. ZiiDi Trader places market information and trading functions inside an app already used widely for daily payments.
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That matters across Black communities because ownership of productive assets remains central to long-term wealth-building. Technology alone cannot close wealth gaps, but reducing the practical distance between a mobile wallet and an investment account can give more people an entry point into formal capital markets.
The platform’s early uptake showed the potential of that approach. Business Daily reported that it processed 7,962 of 14,300 buy and sell orders on 9 February, before the official launch, equivalent to 55% of orders that day. Its share of the value traded was far smaller, underlining that accessibility and large-scale investment are not the same thing.
Access does not remove risk
Ziidi Trader operates within Kenya’s capital-markets framework and under Capital Markets Authority oversight. Yet a simpler route to buying shares does not guarantee returns. Stock prices can fall as well as rise, and investors should understand fees, liquidity, company performance and their own financial capacity before investing.
The Global Banking & Finance Review accolade is therefore best viewed as a marker of financial-services innovation, rather than an endorsement of any individual security or an assurance of investment gains.
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For Safaricom and Kestrel, the recognition also signals how African financial technology can move beyond payments, savings and credit towards wider participation in capital markets. If paired with strong investor education and consumer protection, that shift could help more Kenyans see the stock market as part of everyday financial planning rather than a system reserved for wealthier or institutional players.