Earlier this afternoon, I received the news that M-KOPA has reached 10 million customers across Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.

On its own, 10 million is already a significant milestone for any African fintech. However, what makes this announcement particularly interesting is the speed at which M-KOPA has reached it.

The company took approximately eight years to acquire its first one million customers, reaching that milestone in 2020. In the six years since then, it has added another nine million customers and is now onboarding approximately 10,000 new customers every day.

In other words, M-KOPA has grown its cumulative customer base tenfold since 2020.

That works out to an implied customer growth rate of approximately 47% per year over the period. Interestingly, the company also says that its revenue has grown at an average annual rate of 50% since 2020.

The broad alignment between these two growth rates suggests that revenue has expanded alongside customer reach. However, without more detailed financial disclosures, it is not possible to determine how revenue per customer, credit performance or profitability have changed over the same period.

Nevertheless, one thing is clear: M-KOPA has moved well beyond being an interesting Kenyan pay-as-you-go business. It is becoming one of Africa’s most important inclusive fintech platforms.

From Two Million To 10 Million Customers

This latest milestone is especially meaningful when viewed against M-KOPA’s recent growth trajectory.

In March 2022, I wrote about M-KOPA raising US$75 million in growth equity. At the time, the company had financed two million customers and unlocked more than US$600 million in credit.

M-KOPA CEO and Co-Founder Jesse Moore said then that the company intended to scale to more than 10 million customers within the next few years.

Four years later, that ambition has now been achieved.

By July 2025, M-KOPA reported that it had provided more than US$2 billion in credit to over seven million customers. This means that it has added approximately three million customers in just the past year.

The latest 10,000-customer daily onboarding rate is equivalent to around 3.65 million new customers per year if sustained. This should not be treated as a formal forecast, but it demonstrates the scale at which the business is now operating.

The Smartphone Is The Entry Point, Not The Final Product

The real significance of M-KOPA’s growth is that its business model is no longer simply about financing smartphones.

The smartphone is the entry point into a much broader financial relationship.

M-KOPA’s “More Than a Phone” platform combines smartphone financing with embedded credit, insurance, device protection, affordable data and other digital financial services. The company also finances income-generating assets such as electric motorbikes.

This changes the role of the device.

For a conventional smartphone retailer, the transaction largely ends when the phone is sold. For M-KOPA, that initial purchase marks the beginning of a longer-term customer relationship.

Through flexible micro-repayments, M-KOPA can build a payment record for customers who may not have formal payslips, collateral or conventional credit histories. That record can then become the foundation for access to additional products and services.

This is why “More Than a Phone” should be understood as more than a marketing slogan. The smartphone is simultaneously a digital-access device, a financed asset, an income-generating tool, a distribution channel and the gateway into an expanding financial-services ecosystem.

I explored one example of this in March 2025 when M-KOPA and Turaco announced that they had provided embedded medical insurance to more than one million Kenyans.

In that case, insurance was not sold through the traditional agent-led process. It was embedded into a product that customers were already purchasing and using.

This is precisely where the future of African financial services could be heading: financial products delivered within everyday digital journeys rather than through standalone banking and insurance channels.

Designing Financial Services Around How Africans Actually Earn

M-KOPA describes its core customers as “Every Day Earners” — traders, boda boda riders, tailors, shopkeepers and other economically active people who earn and spend money daily but remain poorly served by conventional financial institutions.

The underlying factor is important.

A person without a monthly payslip is not necessarily without income, economic activity or the ability to repay credit. However, many traditional financial products were designed around formal employment, monthly salaries, conventional bank accounts and established credit records.

M-KOPA has designed its repayments around daily cash flows instead.

As Jesse Moore puts it in the new announcement, “Informal has never meant unviable.”

That may be the most important line from this announcement. 

M-KOPA’s scale suggests that a financial model designed around the realities of African livelihoods can reach millions of customers. It also demonstrates that financial inclusion is not simply about opening more bank accounts. It is about designing useful products around how people actually live, work, earn and spend.

The potential market remains enormous. M-KOPA notes that nearly nine out of 10 workers in sub-Saharan Africa earn their living in the informal economy. This is not a marginal customer segment. It is the economic mainstream across much of the continent.

Kenya Remains At The Centre Of The M-KOPA Story

Although M-KOPA now operates across five African countries, Kenya remains central to its story.

In October 2024, I wrote about M-KOPA Kenya reaching three million customers, creating thousands of jobs and expanding local smartphone assembly.

By November 2025, its Kenya business reported serving 4.8 million customers and unlocking more than KES 207 billion in credit.

It is important to note that these are Kenya-specific figures, while the latest 10 million milestone covers M-KOPA’s five markets.

Kenya is also becoming the industrial base of M-KOPA’s smartphone strategy. The company opened what it describes as Africa’s largest smartphone assembly facility in Nairobi in 2023. The ISO-certified factory employs more than 400 people and has now produced over 3.3 million devices.

This gives the M-KOPA story a dimension that goes beyond fintech.

The company is connecting financial inclusion with local assembly, employment, technology transfer and regional supply-chain development. It is therefore not only financing digital participation; it is also building part of the physical infrastructure supporting that participation from Kenya.

Can A Kenyan-Born Model Scale Across Africa?

Many African technology companies succeed in one market but struggle to expand across the continent.

Africa is not one homogeneous market. Each country has different currencies, regulations, mobile-money ecosystems, consumer behaviours, distribution challenges and economic conditions.

M-KOPA’s expansion therefore matters because it provides evidence that its model can be adapted beyond its original Kenyan base.

Nigeria, in particular, has become the fastest M-KOPA market to surpass one million customers. Its February 2026 Nigeria Impact Report said that more than ₦230 billion in credit had been unlocked for over one million customers.

The company is also supported by a direct-sales network of more than 40,000 agents across its five markets.

That network may be one of the most important — and least discussed — parts of its competitive advantage. Technology enables the financing and payment platform, but physical distribution, customer education, local trust and after-sales support remain crucial when serving mass-market consumers.

M-KOPA’s model is ultimately both digital and deeply physical.

What The Milestone Does Not Yet Tell Us

Reaching 10 million customers validates demand and demonstrates an impressive capacity to execute at scale. However, it does not answer every question about the business.

The announcement does not describe the 10 million customers as active customers. It should therefore be interpreted as a cumulative customer milestone unless M-KOPA provides a corresponding active-user figure.

It also does not disclose:

• The number of active customers in each market.
• The proportion of customers who return for additional products.
• Repayment, arrears and default rates.
• Customer-acquisition costs and lifetime customer value.
• The profitability of individual markets and product lines.
• The total cost of financing compared with alternative credit options.
• How customer data is used to make subsequent lending and product decisions.

These questions will become increasingly important as M-KOPA grows.

Responsible lending, transparent pricing, data governance, device protection practices and fair treatment of customers who encounter financial difficulties must develop at the same pace as customer acquisition.

At 10 million customers, M-KOPA is no longer merely proving that its model can work. It is assuming the responsibilities that come with becoming financial infrastructure for millions of people.

The Road To The Next 10 Million

M-KOPA says that it is already looking towards its next 10 million customers.

If its present onboarding rate of 10,000 customers per day were sustained, another 10 million customers could theoretically be added in under three years. However, the next phase of growth will probably be judged by more than customer acquisition alone.

The larger opportunity will be deepening the value delivered to each customer.

Can a financed smartphone lead to affordable insurance, working-capital credit, better connectivity, higher earnings and eventually access to larger productive assets? Can payment history become a genuinely portable and beneficial financial identity? Can M-KOPA maintain responsible lending standards as its platform becomes more sophisticated?

Those questions will determine whether “More Than a Phone” becomes one of Africa’s most important financial-services platforms or remains primarily a highly successful asset-financing model.

For now, reaching 10 million customers is a significant moment.

It demonstrates that an African financial-services model built around daily incomes, flexible payments, physical distribution and smartphone-enabled services can achieve genuine continental scale.

M-KOPA started by making essential assets more accessible. It is now building something considerably larger: a financial ecosystem designed around people whom traditional institutions have too often misunderstood or overlooked.

That could ultimately prove to be the most consequential part of its journey from one million to 10 million customers.