[New Podcast] Airtel Money Kenya’s Michael Bonke On Winning 14M More Users, Bizna Wallet & The Future Of Digital Finance

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to sit down with Michael Bonke, the new Acting Managing Director of Airtel Money Kenya for the Pure Digital Passion Podcast. We recorded the conversation immediately after Airtel Money launched its new Bizna Wallet for small businesses together with its enhanced 50% cashback proposition.

Michael and I explored the much bigger question of what comes next for Airtel Money in Kenya as it moves from being a relatively small challenger only a few years ago towards becoming an increasingly credible alternative in one of the world’s most developed mobile money markets.

The Immediate Opportunity Is Already Inside Airtel

Michael takes over Airtel Money at an interesting moment.

Airtel Money says it now serves more than 6 million customers, has approximately 270,000 agents, supports payments across more than 2 million merchant points and has grown to around 11% of Kenya’s mobile-money market.

Yet Michael’s most important growth opportunity may already exist within Airtel itself.

Airtel has approximately 20 million active GSM customers according to the figures he shared during our conversation, but only around six million are using Airtel Money.

That leaves roughly 14 million Airtel connectivity customers who are not yet active Airtel Money users.

Michael made converting them his clearest immediate priority:

“We have about 14 million customers who are currently active on Airtel, not active on Airtel Money, who we actually need to convert from Airtel to Airtel Money.”

This is an interesting opportunity because Airtel does not necessarily have to begin by persuading someone to change mobile networks.

Millions of potential Airtel Money customers are already carrying an Airtel SIM card.

The job is to give them enough utility, convenience, value and trust to start using the accompanying wallet regularly.

How Airtel Money Moved From 2% To 11%

When I asked Michael what had changed during Airtel Money’s recent growth phase, his first answer was speed to market.

Airtel Money recently migrated to what he described as a much more robust technology platform, enabling the company to launch products and partnerships faster.

Distribution has been another major factor.

Partnerships with banks including KCB, I&M and Absa expand the number of locations where Airtel Money customers can access cash, move money and make merchant payments.

Airtel Money’s own agent network has also expanded dramatically. Michael said it has grown from fewer than 20,000 active agents four years ago to approximately 270,000 today.

This matters because mobile money ultimately depends on liquidity and distribution.

A wallet can have attractive prices and excellent technology, but customers will not rely on it if they cannot conveniently deposit, withdraw or spend their money.

Bizna Wallet Addresses A Basic SME Problem

The main product launched that morning was the Airtel Money Bizna Wallet, designed for Kenya’s small and informal businesses.

Michael said customer research highlighted two particularly important needs.

The first was separating personal and business money.

A boda boda rider, kiosk owner or trader who receives business payments into a personal mobile-money wallet can quickly lose visibility over what belongs to the business and what has already been used for personal expenses.

The Bizna Wallet creates a dedicated place for those business transactions and provides mini-statements that can help an entrepreneur see who paid them and better account for daily activity.

The second concern was security around reversals.

Michael explained that reversals from the business wallet require a tighter process in which the merchant must confirm the transaction before the money can be reversed.

“Two key things came out. Number one, how do I separate my personal funds from my business funds? And number two, how do I secure my funds?”

These sound like relatively simple features, but they address very practical problems for small businesses.

Customers Can Pay Into Bizna Wallet For Free

Another important proposition is that customers can pay into a Bizna Wallet without being charged, for amounts within the applicable Central Bank of Kenya transaction limits.

Michael stated that payments from KES 1 up to KES 250,000 are free to the paying customer.

Merchants can then move money through different channels, including into bank accounts or through agents. Normal merchant charges can apply to some of these transactions, although Michael noted that qualifying transactions receive the new 50% cashback.

This distinction matters.

“Free payments” can encourage customers to use the service, but the complete economics for the merchant will ultimately determine whether Bizna Wallet becomes the primary place where a business keeps and manages its money.

Could Bizna Wallet Become Much More Than A Wallet?

This is where the conversation became particularly interesting.

I asked Michael whether Bizna Wallet could ultimately become the foundation of a much broader SME financial-services platform.

Once an entrepreneur begins receiving business income through a dedicated wallet, transaction history can potentially support:

• Statements and analytics
• Better financial management
• Savings products
• Responsible working capital financing
• Insurance
• Merchant services
• Embedded financial products

Michael did not commit to a specific roadmap but confirmed that Airtel Money is already thinking beyond the first version.

“Are we able to offer loans to them? Are we able to make the business wallet do much more than it’s currently doing?”

He described the current launch as the first phase, with additional innovations expected over time and within applicable regulatory requirements.

That is potentially the more significant story.

Receiving payments is useful.

Building financial infrastructure around the economic activity flowing through those payments could be transformative.

Why Airtime Became Actual Cash

We also discussed Airtel Money’s decision to change its customer rewards from airtime into actual cash.

According to Michael, the change came directly from customer feedback.

Customers appreciated receiving airtime but wanted greater flexibility.

The new cashback lands in a dedicated Cashback Wallet and can subsequently be transferred into the customer’s main Airtel Money wallet.

From there, the money can be used for airtime, services, transfers or other payments.

Michael’s explanation was straightforward:

Customers were essentially asking: “Is it possible for you to give this to me in my wallet so that… I can also do something else with the cashback?”

That flexibility makes actual money substantially more useful than a reward tied exclusively to telecommunications services.

Cashback Can Bring Customers In. Experience Has To Make Them Stay.

The bigger strategic question is what happens when an incentive ends.

Cashback can persuade someone to try Airtel Money.

It cannot, by itself, create lasting behaviour.

When I asked Michael how Airtel converts an incentive-led trial into a long-term customer relationship, his answer was customer experience.

Can customers send money anywhere?

Can they pay any PayBill?

Can they pay merchants regardless of network?

Can they easily find cash and float?

And when something goes wrong, can Airtel resolve it quickly?

“Give customer value, give them good products, and now ensure that the experience that they are getting from your service is excellent.”

That is ultimately what will determine whether Airtel Money remains someone’s secondary wallet or becomes one of the financial services they depend on every day.

Trust Becomes More Important As Airtel Money Grows

Growth also increases responsibility.

More customers, agents, merchants and transactions create a larger attack surface for fraud.

Michael said Airtel Money has expanded the teams monitoring transactions and is also benefiting from Airtel Kenya’s wider anti-spam capabilities.

He also emphasised regulatory oversight and transaction-monitoring processes intended to protect customer funds.

This is particularly important because mobile money is no longer merely another telecom service.

For millions of people it is effectively financial infrastructure.

Reliability, security and dispute resolution therefore become as important as pricing and product innovation.

Cross-Border Payments Could Become A Major Airtel Advantage

I also shared my recent experience of using Airtel Money to send money to my brother in Tanzania through the My Airtel App.

It was surprisingly seamless.

This raises an interesting opportunity because Airtel operates across 14 African markets.

Michael said Airtel Money is looking at how to make transfers across that footprint increasingly seamless:

“How do we make this be one ecosystem?”

Cross-border payments remain expensive and fragmented across much of Africa.

If Airtel can make sending money between its African markets feel increasingly like moving money domestically, that could become a meaningful competitive advantage.

It would also give the wider Airtel Money ecosystem a strategic dimension that extends well beyond individual national markets.

Could Airtel Money Become The Operating System For African Small Businesses?

Towards the end of the conversation, I asked Michael what may be the biggest question of all.

Could Airtel Money eventually become an operating system for African small businesses when it comes to payments and financial infrastructure?

His answer was unambiguous:

“That is our goal for sure. We are moving towards that step by step.”

He went further, saying Airtel ultimately wants to become the biggest mobile-money provider in Kenya and globally.

That is clearly an ambitious aspiration.

But the building blocks are increasingly visible:

• Consumers
• Agents
• Merchants
• Business wallets
• Banking partnerships
• Interoperability
• Cashback
• Cross-border payments
• Potential embedded finance and credit
• APIs and digital applications

The question is whether Airtel can connect these pieces into something customers and businesses use deeply enough to change long-established behaviour.

The Bottom Line

Michael Bonke takes over Airtel Money Kenya with a much stronger platform than the business had only a few years ago.

The immediate opportunity is clear: convert more of the approximately 14 million existing Airtel connectivity customers who are not yet using Airtel Money.

But the longer-term opportunity is much bigger.

Bizna Wallet could evolve from a dedicated merchant wallet into a broader platform for SME financial services.

Cashback can make everyday transactions more attractive.

Banking and merchant partnerships can increase ubiquity.

Cross-border payments can take advantage of Airtel’s African footprint.

Transaction data could eventually underpin new forms of embedded finance, analytics and responsible lending.

Michael told me that three years from now he would like Airtel Money customers to have experienced enough value that they recommend the platform to their families and friends — and that the gap between Airtel connectivity and Airtel Money usage has largely disappeared.

That is a significant ambition.

Airtel Money remains the challenger in Kenya.

But the question is increasingly shifting from whether it can become a credible alternative to whether it can become a primary financial wallet for significantly more Kenyans — and eventually something much bigger for African businesses.

Watch The Podcast:

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