M-Pesa is the most popular mobile money service in Kenya. It has been the leading service for years but Airtel Money now wants a share of that pie. M-Pesa has over 34 million users according to Safaricom while Airtel Money has about 3.5 million customers. At some point, you may have wanted to send money to someone using a different mobile money service and found the process a bit complicated.
With mobile money interoperability, it is now easier to send money between different services like Safaricom’s M-Pesa and Airtel Money. Mobile money interoperability also makes it easier to make payments to PayBill numbers of a different service. The recipient will receive the money in their respective mobile money wallet.
Airtel Money is aggresively expanding its agent network as that has been the biggest issue with most of its target audience. In the last 3 years, the company has gone from 18,000 to 90,000 Airtel money agents. With that, there might be some incentives to use Airtel Money over Safaricom’s M-Pesa. This also means that you may need to send money from M-Pesa to an Airtel Money user at some point in the near future.
This article will highlight the steps to follow to send money from M-Pesa to Airtel Money or any other service. Safaricom calls this service M-Pesa Popote Which as the name suggest allows sending of money from M-Pesa to other networks such as Airtel and Telkom
Through USSD
To send money from M-Pesa to Airtel Money or any other mobile money service:
- Dial *334# on the phone with your M-Pesa number.
- Choose ‘Send Money’.
- Select ‘Send to other Network‘.
- Enter the Airtel number to send money to.
- Enter the amount to send.
Using M-Pesa or MySafaricom App
You can also send money directly from M-Pesa to Airtel Money using the M-Pesa or the mySafaricom app. To do this, open the app you want to use:
- Navigate to the M-Pesa menu
- Choose the ‘Send Money‘ option
- Enter the Airtel number to send the money to.
- Enter the amount to send.
- You will be prompted to enter your M-Pesa Pin and you will also see the full name of the person you are sending the money too. This is the name they registerd when activating Airtel money.
- Wait for the confirmation that the money is sent.
And that’s how M-Pesa popote works.
Also Read: M-Pesa Send Money and Withdrawal Rates for 2025
