Three questions decide whether to use it: what the fund actually is, what makes it halal, and what catch has not yet been written down anywhere a reader can find it.
What the fund actually is
Ziidi Shari'ah is a standalone money market fund managed by GulfCap Investment Bank (GCIB), with Safaricom as the distribution channel. The Capital Markets Authority, Kenya's regulator for funds like this, approved the registration back in February 2025; the public rollout on M-Pesa only happened on 6 October 2026. The fund holds short-term, highly liquid instruments issued by Shari'ah-compliant banks. On the Safaricom side there is no fee to put money in and no fee to take it back out to your M-Pesa wallet.
What makes it halal
GCIB's chief executive, Saud Shahbal, has said the fund invests only in short-term instruments held in Shari'ah-compliant banks. The returns are a profit distribution, not interest, and are described as free of riba. A GCIB Shari'ah Supervisory Board sits over the fund and is meant to check that what it holds matches what it claims to hold.
That is the structural answer. The practical warning is this. At the time of writing, GCIB has not published the names of the scholars on the board, nor a dated certification document. Those live in the fund's Trust Deed and Information Memorandum, and neither is online yet. If your family wants the imam to see paper before any money goes in, ask Safaricom customer care or GCIB directly for the Shari'ah certificate and the scholars' names in writing. The CMA regulates the fund's structure; it does not certify the Shari'ah side. That is the board's job.
Catch
GCIB has not named the scholars on the Shari'ah Supervisory Board or published a dated certification document for Ziidi Shari'ah. The structural promise is in place, but the paper your imam would want to see has not yet been made available.
The catch, in three parts
The M-Pesa limits still apply. You can only move KES 250,000 (about £1,470) in one top-up, and KES 500,000 (about £2,940) in a day. If a long-saved lump sum is going into the fund, it has to go in across several days.
The management fee has not been published for the Shari'ah fund. The conventional Ziidi charges 2% a year and shows the headline rate net of that fee: the number on screen is what you actually earn. If GCIB follows the same practice on the Shari'ah fund, the same applies. If not, the rate on screen may be the gross number and the real return is lower. Ask the app or Safaricom customer care what the figure on the screen is net of before you move a big balance.
Settlement timing is also unclear. Safaricom's product page says earnings begin the next business day after a top-up. One trade-press write-up says a withdrawal can take up to 72 hours to reach the M-Pesa wallet. Plan for up to three business days until Safaricom publishes a clear redemption rule, especially if the money is for a bill with a date on it.
If you are sending from the UK or the Gulf
The fund account is your mother's own. A sender in London or Doha cannot push money directly into her Ziidi balance; the fund sits inside her M-Pesa registration and only she can top it up. The transfer comes in to her wallet the ordinary way, through Sendwave, Wise or whatever route you already use. From there she moves what she wants to invest into Ziidi Shari'ah herself.
- Send the money to her M-Pesa wallet the way you already do.
- Call her and talk her through dialling *334# on her phone.
- She picks Ziidi Shari'ah, enters the amount she wants to invest, and confirms with her M-Pesa PIN.
- The balance moves into the fund in her name and starts earning the next business day.
The plain verdict
It is sensible to open the fund, and it is not yet sensible to move the family's whole balance into it while the paperwork is still missing. The structural case is good: a CMA-registered fund, the one app the family already trusts, a Shari'ah board sitting over it, and KES 100 to try it costs nothing. The gap is the paperwork. Until GCIB publishes the board membership, the Shari'ah certification and the management fee, start small. Those three documents are what the imam needs to see, and what any serious adviser would check before putting the family's savings in.
Corrections
None so far. If we get something wrong, the fix is dated here.