The growing remote workforce in Kenya just got a quieter but meaningful upgrade to their financial toolkit: PayPal withdrawals are now directly available within the M-PESA super app.
For years, freelancers and digital contractors relied on clunky web portals to move funds from PayPal into local wallets.
That friction, while long tolerated, often added days to a process that needed to feel instantaneous.
With the update, Safaricom now offers users a route that skips logins, browser redirects, and third-party workarounds, bringing cross-border payments closer to real-time, directly from a smartphone.
The addition arrives as Kenya’s freelance economy gains traction with global clients.
Payment channels that once sat on the fringes of mobile money usage are becoming core to how income is earned, moved, and spent locally.
The feature simplifies a process that previously relied on external portals or third-party integrations.
For users handling frequent, moderate inflows, typical in the remote work and freelance space, it introduces a faster, app-native route that removes unnecessary steps.
Everything from balance checks to withdrawals now happens within the same ecosystem already used for payments, savings, and daily transactions.
In the year ended March 2025, M-PESA brought in KES 161.1 billion ($1.25 billion), a 15.2% increase driven by rising user activity.
Monthly chargeable transactions per user climbed 20.3% to nearly 38, while the app itself has reached 13.7 million downloads and supports 4.7 million users.
Meanwhile, one-month active users grew to 35.82 million, proof that what began as a mobile wallet has evolved into a foundational part of day-to-day economic life.
Agent outlets, too, grew 14.1% to nearly 299,000, reflecting continued demand for physical cash movement even as digital features take hold.
M-PESA wallets now allow balances of up to KES 500,000 ($3,875), with transaction ceilings that make it viable for moderate to high-volume freelancers.
PayPal integration simply closes another gap, this time with a layer of user convenience that reflects Safaricom’s long-game strategy: turn M-PESA into a one-stop operating system for personal finance.
