Pan-African fintech M-KOPA has reached 10m customers across five countries, a milestone propelled by a strategic shift into smartphone financing that transformed the company’s growth trajectory. It took the business eight years to reach its first million users selling pay-as-you-go solar home systems. The next 9m arrived in just six years, after it began financing internet-enabled handsets in 2020.
The acceleration highlights how M-KOPA, which operates in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa, tapped into a far larger market by making smartphones the entry point for a suite of digital financial services. The group now signs up about 10,000 new customers daily.
Founded in 2012, M-KOPA initially allowed off-grid households to purchase solar panels through small daily mobile money instalments, with the devices remotely disabled if payments stopped. The model provided clean energy but had a ceiling defined by household penetration of solar kits. In 2020, the company began applying the same embedded finance logic to smartphones — devices that served a broader demand and unlocked recurring revenues from data, insurance, credit and device protection.
The company calls the bundle its “More than a Phone” platform. At the point of purchase, customers receive a handset that comes with embedded life and device insurance, a digital credit line, and screen protection. The phone itself acts as collateral: M-KOPA uses software linked to the device’s unique identifier to restrict functionality if a repayment is missed, a mechanism that keeps default rates low enough to sustain the model.
The offering is designed for what M-KOPA labels “Every Day Earners” — traders, motorcycle taxi riders, tailors and small shopkeepers who generate income daily but rarely appear on formal payrolls or credit bureau files. “Every Day Earners have always been creditworthy. What they needed was credit built around how they really make a living, not a payslip,” said Jesse Moore, co-founder and chief executive. “Informal has never meant unviable. 10 million customers on, that’s no longer a belief. It’s proven.”
The opportunity M-KOPA is chasing is large. Nearly nine in ten workers in sub-Saharan Africa earn their living in the informal economy, according to the International Labour Organization. By 2040, the region is projected to have one of the world’s biggest populations of economically active adults without formal salaries — the core customer base the company is built to serve. Meanwhile, smartphone adoption across Africa has risen sharply, with the GSMA forecasting that the number of mobile internet users on the continent will exceed 700m by 2026.
The pivot has reordered M-KOPA’s geography and infrastructure. Nigeria, where the company launched later, became the fastest market in its history to exceed 1m customers, a reflection of both population scale and pent-up demand for device financing in a country where bank credit is scarce. The group’s reach now relies on a direct sales network of more than 40,000 agents, which it says is Africa’s largest such distribution force.
In 2023, M-KOPA opened what it describes as the continent’s biggest smartphone assembly plant, in Kenya. The factory employs more than 400 people, has achieved ISO quality management certification, and has produced over 3.3m devices. Local assembly helps the company manage supply chain costs and tailor specifications to its target market, although it also exposes the business to currency fluctuations and component import risks common to African manufacturing.
M-KOPA’s revenue has grown at an average annual rate of 50 per cent since 2020. The performance has earned the company a spot on the Financial Times list of Africa’s fastest-growing companies for five consecutive years, and it has appeared on CNBC’s ranking of the world’s top fintechs for two years. The company processes more than 2m payments daily and says it has unlocked over $2bn in cumulative credit for customers.
Financial details beyond top-line revenue growth were not disclosed. Many high-growth fintechs operating asset-heavy models remain loss-making at the operating level, as they invest heavily in distribution and credit risk management. M-KOPA has raised equity and debt from development finance institutions, commercial banks and impact investors over multiple funding rounds.
Default rates and portfolio quality are key metrics for the model. M-KOPA does not publish detailed credit performance data, but its continued ability to access commercial debt suggests lenders are comfortable with the risk. The company’s approach benefits from the daily repayment structure that mirrors the cash flows of informal workers, unlike traditional monthly instalment loans. However, the sector faces rising competition from telecoms operators, device manufacturers and other fintechs offering similar smartphone financing, notably in Nigeria and Kenya.
The company’s ambition is to build a broader digital financial services platform. Once a customer finances a phone, M-KOPA can sell additional products such as e-motorbikes, health insurance and merchant cash advances. “Every Day Earners are why we do this. From our very first customer to this year’s ten millionth, this is proof that a model built for Africa’s Every Day Earners doesn’t just work, it scales and endures,” said chief financial officer Faraimose Kutadzaushe.
Nine in ten customers surveyed independently by the company said M-KOPA products improved their lives. While such self-commissioned research has limitations, it is consistent with the value proposition of giving informal workers access to an asset that enables communication, mobile payments and market information.
Looking ahead, Moore said the company was already focused on the next 10m customers. The addressable base remains vast, but sustaining the recent pace of growth will require navigating regulatory diversity across five jurisdictions, maintaining a lean cost base and managing foreign exchange exposure — especially in Nigeria, where currency volatility has repeatedly dented the earnings of consumer-facing businesses.
Nevertheless, the numbers make M-KOPA one of the fastest-scaling inclusive finance platforms in emerging markets. By latching onto the smartphone as both a productive asset and a gateway to financial services, the company turned a deliberate product choice into a growth engine that has reshaped its entire trajectory.