Background

In March 2025, M-PESA turned 18, a milestone that marked its “coming of age.” Launched in 2007 as a simple money-transfer tool, M-PESA has grown into Africa’s most influential mobile financial platform enabling over 60 million active users across Kenya and beyond to send, spend, save, and borrow seamlessly.

For millions of Kenyans, both banked and unbanked, M-PESA is more than a service; it’s a way of life. To celebrate this milestone, Safaricom partnered with MediaPal to run a digital campaign that wasn’t about nostalgia, but about relevance embedding M-PESA’s impact into lived, everyday moments.

The Challenge

Safaricom set two key objectives:

  1. Celebrate M-PESA’s journey from a cash-transfer pilot to a full digital financial ecosystem.
  2. Re-energize usage through community engagement, reinforcing trust in a safe and worry-free mobile money environment.

The task was not just to remind Kenyans of what M-PESA had achieved, but to demonstrate its continued relevance, spark participation, and embed the celebration into real-world experiences.

Our Approach

MediaPal’s challenge was to translate broad brand ambitions into measurable digital outcomes: maximizing reach, driving bundle uptake, and accelerating cashless payments, all while keeping cost per acquisition low.

Precision Audience Segmentation

Using MediaPal’s Data Marketplace, we moved beyond demographics to build behavior-led profiles. Segments included:

  • Youth → reached via entertainment & culture sites, where the KES 20 Concert felt organic.
  • Strivers & Aspirers → targeted on community and regional news sites with price-sensitive bundles like So Much for 20 Bob.
  • Achievers → engaged on lifestyle and financial news publishers with M-PESA framed as a trusted financial companion.
Programmatic Activation
  • Rich-media banners placed across high-quality Kenyan inventory.
  • Continuous real-time optimisation reallocating spend to high-conversion audiences as signals emerged.
  • Campaigns delivered tailored offers that aligned naturally with each segment’s lifestyle.
Key Campaign Offers
  1. Free Lipa na M-PESA Day
  • All merchant transactions were fee-free.
  • Merchants kept 100% of earnings; customers paid exact prices.
  • Campaign ads reinforced “frictionless, cashless adoption” at scale.
  1. So Much for 20 Bob Bundle
  • 18 minutes of call time, free send-money, Skiza tune, and a daily newspaper, all for KES 20.
  • Designed as a gateway offer to onboard price-sensitive users into the wider M-PESA ecosystem.
  1. KES 20 Concert at Uhuru Park
  • A live concert featuring top local artists.
  • Tickets tied exclusively to in-app bundle purchases via M-PESA App and USSD.
  • Campaign drove both digital adoption and community engagement.
Impact

The campaign delivered both scale and depth of engagement:

  • 12.5 million impressions across premium Kenyan publishers.
  • 2.3 million engagements across bundles, concert tickets, and fee-free Lipa na M-PESA promos.
  • 0.68% CTR, outperforming Kenya’s average display CTR of ~0.3%.
  • 74% viewability rate, ensuring placements were seen and trusted.
  • 21% attention rate, showing strong resonance with interactive creatives.
  • KES 20 Concert sold out with over 50,000 attendees at Uhuru Park, all ticketed exclusively through M-PESA.
  • So Much for 20 Bob bundle uptake grew by 4.7x during campaign weeks.
  • On Free Lipa na M-PESA Day, merchant transactions spiked 38%, driving first-time digital adoption among cash-heavy users.
Why It Mattered

Beyond metrics, the campaign reframed M-PESA’s identity:

  • From a utility to a daily companion woven into life’s big and small moments.
  • From convenience to community connection, enabling concerts, bundles, and everyday purchases.
  • From nostalgia to relevance, marking 18 years not just as history, but as proof of continued innovation.

Turning 18 wasn’t just a milestone it was M-PESA’s graduation into a more integrated, human-centered future. Through precision targeting, contextual placements, and real-time optimisation, MediaPal helped Safaricom transform a brand anniversary into a movement of everyday relevance.