What changes for small businesses under Safaricom's Pata More Campaign

Walk into any business, big or small in Kenya and you will see the same routine playing out at nearly every one of them.

A customer taps their phone, a trader glances at their M-PESA balance, and the sale is done in seconds.

It is such a normal part of daily commerce now that most people barely think about the fees quietly chipped off each transaction, fees that, multiplied across dozens of sales a day, can add up to real money lost from a trader's pocket.

That is the gap Safaricom's new Pata More Popote Ulipo push is aimed at closing.

It is not a new app or a new product.

It is a set of changes to tools millions of Kenyans already use daily, Pochi La Biashara and Lipa na M-PESA, built around one idea,let people keep more of what they make.

A business wallet, not just a payment tool

For a long time, Pochi La Biashara has done one job well, letting small traders receive mobile money payments without a full business account. Under Pata More, it starts doing a lot more.

Pochi transactions of up to Sh200 are now free, double the previous Sh100 threshold.

For the promotional period, Pochi payments above Sh200 attract revised charges, with transactions of Sh2,501 and above capped at Sh50. 

For a mama mboga or a boda rider running dozens of small transactions a day, that is not a marginal saving. It is money that stays in the till instead of leaking out in charges.

Around that core change, Pochi is being built out into something closer to a full financial toolkit.

Traders can now tap into Taasi Pochi for eligible business credit, save and invest through Ziidi Pochi, protect their income with Tuunza Mapato insurance, pick up voice and data bundles from as low as Sh10 through Ofa ya Pochi, and even earn commission of up to 5% by selling airtime through the wallet.

None of these are flashy additions.

They are the kind of practical, unglamorous features that actually change how a small business runs day to day, helping traders separate business money from personal money and get a clearer picture of their own cash flow.

Lower costs on both sides of the Till

The changes extend to Lipa na M-PESA too, and they cut both ways, for the trader taking the payment and the customer making it.

The Buy Goods Kadogo threshold has moved from Sh200 to Sh500, meaning a larger share of everyday small transactions now qualify for lower fees.

Merchants running a Business Till also get a 50% cut in transaction costs when they pay out from the till itself, whether that is to a pay bill, another customer, or another till.

On the customer side, Scan to Pay and Tap to Pay are aimed at the small frictions that slow down a queue, fumbling for change, waiting for a text confirmation, punching in a till number.

Scanning a QR code or tapping a phone at participating outlets is meant to make paying faster, which in practice also means merchants get paid and move on to the next customer sooner.

What's the roll-over impact?

None of these changes reinvent how Kenyans pay for things.

What they do is quietly shift the economics of doing business in cash-tight, high-volume trades, where a shilling saved on fees is a shilling a trader gets to keep.

With the fee cap window open until 31st October 2026, the window for small businesses to feel that difference is now.