Fuliza, Explained: How the Charges Actually Work (2026)

Fuliza is M-Pesa's overdraft: when you pay or send money and your balance falls short, Fuliza completes the transaction and you repay from your next M-Pesa inflow. It is the most used credit product in Kenya — and one of the least understood, because its cost is a daily fee, not an interest rate. This guide explains the machinery, shows what the daily fee actually annualises to, and sets out when Fuliza is the right tool and when it quietly becomes the most expensive money you will ever borrow.

What Fuliza actually is

• An opt-in overdraft on M-Pesa, provided by Safaricom with its partner banks NCBA and KCB, which underwrite the credit. It is bank credit delivered through a telco interface.
• It triggers automatically at the moment of payment when your balance is short. That convenience is the product — and the danger, because you can borrow without ever deciding to borrow.
• Your limit is set from your M-Pesa usage history and grows or shrinks with your behaviour.

How the cost works (read this twice)

Fuliza charges two things:

1. A one-off access fee each time you fuliza — 1% of the amount.
2. A daily maintenance fee for every day the balance stays unpaid, tiered by the amount outstanding — plus 20% excise duty on that fee.

The tariff as restructured by Safaricom, NCBA and KCB (as at 8 July 2026):

Confirm the current table on Safaricom's official Fuliza tariff page before relying on it — never on a screenshot from social media.

What the daily fee really costs

Here is the arithmetic the interface never shows you.

Take KSh 2,000 outstanding, at KSh 20 a day plus excise. Carry it for 30 days and the maintenance fees alone come to roughly KSh 600 before excise — about 30% of the amount borrowed, in a single month. Annualised, that is in the hundreds of percent.

Now take the same KSh 2,000 cleared the next day: one day's fee plus the 1% access fee, perhaps KSh 40 all in. Perfectly reasonable for genuinely completing a payment you needed to make.

Same product, same amount, wildly different cost. Fuliza is priced for hours and days. It is brutal over weeks. That single distinction is the whole of the advice here.

For comparison, the Hustler Fund charges 8% a year, and a licensed digital loan for the same amount over a month is usually far cheaper than a carried Fuliza balance — compare licensed personal loans.

Repayment — automatic, and that matters

Fuliza repays itself from your next M-Pesa inflow — a deposit, an incoming transfer, or a payment received. You cannot schedule it or defer it: money that lands goes to Fuliza first.

If you budget to the shilling, an outstanding Fuliza balance means your next inflow is already spoken for. This is how people end up in a loop: the inflow clears the overdraft, leaving them short again, so they fuliza again. If that describes your last three months, the fix is not a better overdraft — it is a small buffer built deliberately, even KSh 2,000, so the next shortfall costs nothing.

Does Fuliza affect your credit record?

The credit is underwritten by regulated banks, so unpaid balances can be reported through Kenya's credit reference bureau system like any other bank credit. Treat it as real credit, because it legally is.

Check the current CRB-listing practice against the banks' own disclosures — the treatment of small mobile balances has changed with CBK directives over time — and see how to check your credit score in Kenya to find out what is actually on your file.

Using Fuliza sanely

• Keep it for bridging hours or days, never funding weeks.
• Clear it the day money lands. Every extra day is another fee plus excise.
• Stay aware of the tier boundaries. The jump from the KSh 501–1,000 band to the KSh 1,001–1,500 band takes the daily fee from KSh 5 to KSh 18 — more than triple, for one extra shilling of borrowing. If you are near a boundary, the cheaper move is to fuliza less and cover the rest another way.
• Use the free bands deliberately. Small balances under KSh 100 are free, and the KSh 101–1,000 bands carry three free days.
• If you are fulizaing rent-sized amounts monthly, you do not need an overdraft; you need a cheaper structured product, or a budget review.
• Check your standing in M-PESA → Loans & Savings.

Frequently asked questions

Is Fuliza a loan? Functionally yes — bank-underwritten credit with fees, provided by NCBA and KCB through Safaricom. Packaging it as "completing your transaction" makes it feel smaller than it is.

What does Fuliza cost? A 1% access fee each time, plus a daily maintenance fee tiered by the amount outstanding, plus 20% excise duty on that fee. Cleared quickly it is cheap; carried for weeks it is very expensive.

Why did my limit drop? Limits track usage and repayment behaviour. Carrying balances for long periods or defaulting shrinks them.

Can I choose when to repay Fuliza? No. It deducts automatically from your next M-Pesa inflow, ahead of anything else you had planned for that money.

Fuliza, M-Shwari or a loan app? Fuliza bridges a payment right now. M-Shwari and licensed loan apps give you a structured amount for a term. For anything you will repay over weeks, the structured options are usually cheaper — and the Hustler Fund is cheaper still if the amount fits. See how to spot an unlicensed loan app before borrowing from anything unfamiliar.