Buy bitcoin with M-Pesa

What is M-Pesa?

M-Pesa is the mobile money service Safaricom and Vodacom run through their M-Pesa Africa joint venture, with the wallet held against a phone number instead of a bank account. It operates in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lesotho among other African markets, and is used to send money, pay bills and pay a business through a paybill or till number. Each country's central bank licenses and supervises the local operator: in Kenya the central bank counted 94.2 million registered mobile money accounts and 572,104 active agents across all providers in June 2026, which is the size of the market M-Pesa leads rather than M-Pesa's own account count.

Speed

Wallet to wallet and paybill payments confirm by SMS within seconds of the PIN prompt, at any hour of the day.

Cost

Charges come from the operator's published tariff table, which steps up in flat bands with the amount for sending and for cashing out rather than applying a single percentage.

Limits

Per transaction and daily ceilings are set by the operator with central bank approval and differ by country, so check the current table before attempting a large deposit.

Speed and cost describe the rail itself. What an exchange adds on top varies by platform and is shown per exchange below.