A Nairobi High Court has ordered Safaricom to pay innovator Peter Nthei and Beluga Limited Company Ksh1.4 billion as compensation for copyright infringement over an M-Pesa teenagers’ account product.

Nthei and Beluga sued Safaricom, claiming that it had copied their idea for a mobile wallet sub-account for teenagers dubbed ‘M-TEEN MOBILE WALLET USSD CODE’ (Peter’s Product) by launching a strikingly similar product called ‘Manage Child Account/Manage Junior Account’.

On May 8, 2026, Justice Josephine Wayua Mong’are found that Safaricom’s actions violated Nthei’s rights under the Copyright Act and confirmed that he is the copyright owner of the product ‘MTEEN MOBILE WALLET USSD CODE’.

In the detailed judgement, Judge Mong’are ordered the giant telecommunication company to pay the two, Nthei and Beluga Limited, a total sum of Ksh1.4 billion as general damages together with interest.

Further, the court ordered Safaricom to pay Nthein and Beluga 0.5% of its gross M-PESA revenue for each financial year, commencing with the financial year ending March 31, 2025, and continuing for as long as it continues to operate the “Manage Child Account” or “M-PESA Go” product or any substantially similar parent-child control functionality.

Monetary award

“The plaintiffs (Nthei and Beluga) are awarded Ksh1,400,067,000 as general damages together with interest at court rates from the date of judgement until payment in full,” Judge Mong’are ruled.

According to court documents, Nthei avers that in October 2020, Beluga funded him to develop the product, which targeted teenagers aged between 13 and 17 years and young adults aged between 18 and 24 years to enable parental control over their spending.

Nthei reveals that his product was registered with the Kenya Copyright Board, and he holds a copyright certificate.

On March 13, 2021, he approached the then Safaricom executive, Sylvia Mulinge, with the idea, but there was no response from her, and between March and June 2021, he shared detailed insights with Sitoyo Lopokoiyot, then the chief operating officer of Safaricom and later CEO of M-Pesa Africa.

He cites that Lopokoiyot initially said Nthei’s product was not implementable because teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 lack national ID cards and would need Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) approval.

Nthei and Beluga Limited claim that they met Lopokoiyot on June 22, 2021, where he claimed Safaricom had been thinking of a similar product and offered to link them to a microfinance bank.

They told the court that the June 22, 2021, information conveyed to them by Lopokoiyot was a pretext, as they accused Safaricom of deciding to copy Nthei’s product and claim it as its own, and that they were shocked to see Safaricom officers test-running the Safaricom product.