ZiiDi Trader, the M-PESA-based stock trading platform, has widened its net, loosening the identification rules that once limited who could sign up to buy and sell NSE-listed shares straight from their phones.
Until now, opening an account meant having a valid Kenyan national ID linked to an existing M-Pesa profile. That single requirement locked out a fair number of people who wanted in on the Nairobi Securities Exchange but did not fit that narrow box.
ZiiDi Trader has now added three more accepted documents:
- Kenyan passport
- Military ID for KDF personnel
- Foreign passports for non-citizens living in or transacting through Kenya.
The addition of foreign passports is the significant change, as it means expatriates, foreign residents, and anyone transacting through Kenya without a national ID can now open a ZiiDi Trader account and start investing in NSE-listed shares.
ZiiDi’s main pitch remains unchanged, letting users skip the stockbroker visits and paperwork that traditionally comes with opening a Central Depository System (CDS) account, doing everything through M-PESA on their phone instead.
What has changed is who gets to walk through that door.
This fits a pattern seen across Kenya’s fintech space, where platforms keep chipping away at the friction that has historically kept ordinary people, and now foreign residents, out of formal capital markets.
The NSE has struggled for years to grow retail participation beyond a small pool of investors, and tools like ZiiDi Trader are part of the answer, provided people actually know they exist and trust them enough to put money in.
