Airtel Money Targets M-Pesa's Merchant Base with Zero-Fee Bizna Wallet

It's begining to look like Christmas for Kenyan busness owners.

Banks started it by slashing PesaLink transfer fees, Safaricom responded by cutting M-PESA business tariffs, and now Airtel Money has joined the race with Bizna Wallet, a new SME payment service offering zero merchant fees and free Till and PayBill transactions below Sh1,500.

Three announcements in less than two weeks point to something bigger than routine product updates. Kenya's largest payment providers are suddenly fighting much harder for the country's millions of small businesses.

How Bizna Wallet Works on the Ground

Airtel is targeting local merchants who care about every shilling.

Bizna Wallet lets small enterprise owners accept customer payments through Till and PayBill numbers without paying transaction fees on collections under Sh1,500. Beyond fee waivers, the platform gives traders a dedicated tool to separate business income from personal accounts while tracking daily sales and preventing unauthorized payment reversals.

For a kiosk owner collecting ten Sh1,000 payments every day, removing merchant charges on those collections means no longer losing a cut of daily gross revenue. Over the course of a week, those avoided processing fees add up, protecting margins for businesses where every shilling counts.

Safaricom built its position on a vast merchant network, while commercial banks relied on payroll accounts. Airtel, meanwhile, spent years competing primarily on peer-to-peer transfer rates. M-PESA's main advantage remains its sheer ubiquity among buyers.

Even so, small business owners are winning as payment providers actively undercut each other.