By Simple Idea to a Global Revolution: Sitoyo Lopokoiyit on the Rise of M-PESA
M-PESA’s story reads like a legend now, but in the early 2000s, not even the people closest to the project knew it would transform how the world moves money.
Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, now the CEO of M-PESA Africa, remembers those early conversations vividly. Back then, mobile money was only an experiment, a prototype trying to find its footing.
In 2005, two years before M-PESA launched, a member of the Safaricom team, Susie Lonie, walked into his office at Caltex, where Sitoyo served as Business Advisor and Merchandising Manager.
She wanted fuel stations to act as cash-in, cash-out points for a service that would later become Africa’s most successful financial innovation.
“They assumed we owned and operated our service stations,” Sitoyo recalls with a smile. “We actually franchised them to independent dealers. That single conversation is what sparked the aggregator model still used globally today.”
That model, born out of a simple clarification, became the backbone of modern mobile money distribution.
Simple Idea to a Global Revolution: Sitoyo Lopokoiyit on the Rise of M-PESA
The Evolution of a Vision
Sitoyo was one of the earliest users of the pilot service, long before Kenyans knew how it would redefine daily life.
He officially joined Safaricom in 2011 to help shape the future of M-PESA, later moving to Vodacom Tanzania to lead M-Commerce, before returning home to drive financial services at Safaricom.
His journey mirrors the product’s evolution: bold, disruptive, and unrelenting.
“You cannot fathom how the world has changed because of M-PESA. The impact is tremendous,” he says.
Today, innovations like Fuliza, Pochi la Biashara, and Lipa na M-PESA are everyday essentials solutions Sitoyo and his peers once built as quiet internal projects.
They now support 34 million Kenyan users who perform 89 million transactions daily, contributing 42% of Safaricom’s revenue.
Building a Pan-African Powerhouse
Sitoyo’s focus is now continental. In 2020, Safaricom and Vodacom established M-PESA Africa, a joint venture aimed at accelerating product development and consolidating mobile money operations across the region.
Today, M-PESA serves over 60 million customers and 5 million businesses across eight African countries, processing one million dollars in transactions every day. What began in Kenya has become a blueprint for the world, inspiring mobile money solutions in more than 200 countries.
As M-PESA turns 18, Sitoyo reflects with pride and optimism:
“It’s great to see what started in Kenya become a success across Africa. But more importantly, it inspired the world. Mobile money exists globally because of what began here.”
From that first conversation at a fuel station to becoming Africa’s leading fintech platform, M-PESA remains a testament to the power of bold ideas and the people who believe in them before anyone else can see their potential.
The story was first featured by Safaricom Newsroom
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