Niazime Terms of Service

Version 2026-10-15 (2026 Regulations edition). These Terms apply once Niazime operates under the Central Bank of Kenya (Non-Deposit Taking Credit Providers) Regulations, 2026.

1. Who this agreement is between

These Terms are an agreement between you and Niazime Limited ("Niazime", "we", "us"), a Kenyan private company, governing your use of the Niazime app and website. Niazime is an independent company; it is not a product or subsidiary of any other firm. By verifying your phone number and completing registration, you accept these Terms in full. If you do not agree, do not complete registration.

Niazime is not a bank and does not take deposits. We lend our own money to individuals, in small amounts for short periods. Niazime is applying for registration with the Central Bank of Kenya as a non-deposit taking credit provider under the Central Bank of Kenya (Non-Deposit Taking Credit Providers) Regulations, 2026.

We do not hold your money. Loans go by M-Pesa straight to your own registered line, and you repay to our M-Pesa Pay Bill.

2. Who can use Niazime

To register, you must:

• be 18 years or older;
• hold a Safaricom M-Pesa line registered in your own name — Niazime cannot send or receive money on any other network;
• hold a valid Kenyan National ID. We do not currently lend to passport holders, Alien ID holders, or holders of military identification documents, regardless of residency or citizenship status;
• provide accurate information throughout registration and afterward.

We verify your identity by checking your National ID number against the government identity registry through TransUnion (Kenya), and by matching your name to your M-Pesa line and your M-Pesa statement. We do not take a selfie or any other biometric data. If you enter a wrong ID number three times at the credit check, that step is locked for an hour. If the name on your credit report does not match your verified name, a person reviews your request.

Kenyan anti-money-laundering law requires us to ask whether you, a close family member, or a close business associate hold or have held a prominent public office. You must answer truthfully. A "yes" does not disqualify you, but a person will review your registration before you can borrow, and we may ask you about the source of your funds. A false declaration is grounds for closing your account. This is a continuing duty: if your answer changes after you register, tell us promptly through Help & complaints in the app.

2.1 The KES 1 line check

Before we run any paid identity or credit check, we send an M-Pesa payment prompt for KES 1 to your phone, which you approve with your own M-Pesa PIN. We send the shilling straight back to the same line by M-Pesa, at no cost to you. This shows that you control the M-Pesa wallet, not just the SIM, and the name Safaricom returns with the payment is used to match your ID. It is not a fee or a deposit, and we keep nothing.

There are no registration, membership or account fees.

3. Your account

One person may hold one Niazime account. You are responsible for keeping your phone, your Niazime PIN and the one-time codes we send you secure. You set a 4-digit PIN when you first sign in; it opens the app, signs your loans and confirms number changes and account closure. Five wrong entries lock it for 15 minutes and end the signed-in session, and you can reset a forgotten PIN with a code sent to your registered number. One-time codes expire after 5 minutes and allow 3 tries. If you sign in from a phone we have not seen before after more than 90 days away, we also ask for your National ID number, to protect a dormant account against a SIM swap. Any action taken from your account, authenticated by your PIN or by a code sent to your registered number, is treated as authorized by you. Tell us immediately if you believe your phone or account has been compromised.

You may change your registered number from Preferences in the app. You must prove you hold the new number (a code sent to it) and enter your PIN, and we notify your old number. For your protection, new loans are paused for 24 hours after any number change; if you did not make the change, contact us within that time.

You may close your account at any time from Preferences in the app, provided you have no loan running. Closing your account ends this agreement, except for any obligations that arose before closure. What we delete and what the law requires us to keep is set out in the Privacy Policy.

We may decline to register you, or may suspend or close an existing account, including where we reasonably believe you have provided false information, are attempting to defraud Niazime or anyone else, or are in breach of these Terms.

3.1 Using the app

We grant you a personal, non-transferable license to use the Niazime app and website for your own borrowing. You may not copy, modify or reverse-engineer the app; run scripts, bots or any automated means against it; attempt to bypass a security measure or gain access to another person's account or to our systems; or use Niazime for any unlawful purpose. Doing any of these is a breach of these Terms and grounds for suspending or closing your account; any loan you have taken remains due on its own terms. The app, its design, its name and its code belong to Niazime Limited; nothing here transfers any of that to you.

3.2 Dormant accounts

An account with no sign-in and no transaction for 12 months is dormant. We hold no money for you, so nothing is kept, deducted or handed over: a dormant account is simply inactive. It is not closed for dormancy alone. To use it again you sign in and confirm your identity as described above. A loan that is still unpaid stays owed, dormant or not.

3.3 If you die

If we receive a death certificate together with a grant of letters of administration or probate, we freeze the account. Any overpayment we owe is sent back as in section 6.3, or paid to the estate through the personal representative. A loan the account had taken remains owed by the estate, without any late fee or extra charge, and we never pursue family members personally. The estate's representative may ask for the account statement and the data export described in the Privacy Policy. [TO CONFIRM (counsel): documents accepted under the Law of Succession Act.]

4. Credit checks and credit bureaus

To decide whether to lend and how much, we use your own M-Pesa statement (the password-protected PDF from Safaricom, covering at least 3 complete months, which we check for tampering), a short questionnaire, and, before your first loan, a credit report on you from TransUnion, a licensed credit reference bureau. A credit report on its own never leads to a decline, except where it shows a default or a restructured loan.

If we decline you, we tell you why, and you can ask for a person to review the decision; we do so within 14 days. A wrong bureau listing can be corrected by whoever made it or by the bureau.

We report your Niazime loans to TransUnion, both loans repaid on time and loans that are not, once a month. Before any unpaid loan is listed against you, we tell you by SMS and in the app at least 30 days in advance, with the amount and the date. We never list a loan as unpaid where KES 1,000 or less is outstanding, and we update the bureau once the loan is paid.

5. Borrowing: the Kopa loan

5.1 What you can borrow

A Kopa loan is an unsecured loan repaid in a single payment.

• Amount: from KES 1,500 to KES 5,000, in steps of KES 50.
• Term: 20, 40 or 61 days.
• One loan at a time.

Your first limit is KES 1,500 for everyone who qualifies. Your own M-Pesa statement decides whether you qualify and sets a ceiling on your limit: the lower of 25% of your typical monthly income (leaving out money moved between your own accounts) and 50% of your typical monthly peak balance. If your statement cannot support KES 1,500, we decline with the reason "too little M-Pesa activity". We also decline, rather than offer less, where there are signs a loan would be risky for you: repayments already above 40% of your income, an inconsistent answer on the questionnaire, a loan taken to repay another loan, or a phone line less than six months old. Another loan on its own is not a reason to decline, as long as your repayments stay within that 40%.

Your limit grows. Your limit doubles once the profit Niazime has earned from your own loans reaches twice your current limit (for example, going from KES 1,500 to KES 3,000 needs KES 3,000 earned). It is still capped by what your M-Pesa statement supports and by the KES 5,000 maximum.

The 61-day term is limited to half your limit (never less than KES 1,500) until you have repaid ten loans on time and Niazime has earned KES 5,000 in interest from your loans. The app shows the figure.

5.2 What it costs

Interest is the only charge. There are no fees: no application, account, late, penalty or rollover fees, and no default interest. We pay Safaricom's M-Pesa charge for sending you the loan.

Interest is a flat share of the amount you borrow, deducted when the loan is paid out. You receive the loan amount less the interest, and you repay the full loan amount on the due date. Your rate depends on your repayment record with us:

As a daily rate on the cash you actually receive, these are about 1.5%, 1% and 0.8% a day. The highest annual rate on the loan amount is 420% (a first KES 1,500 loan for 20 days).

For example, a first KES 1,500 loan for 20 days pays out KES 1,155, and you repay KES 1,500.

5.3 Taking a loan

Each loan is a separate agreement. Before you confirm, the app shows you the amount you will receive, the interest, the amount and date of repayment and the annual rate, together with a key information document. If the repayment looks hard to meet, or the terms seem onerous, you do not have to take the loan.

You accept a loan by entering your 4-digit Niazime PIN after you have seen its terms; that entry is your electronic signature. The rate that applies is fixed when you confirm and does not change afterward. A copy of your loan agreement and key information document, showing the time and reference of your signature, stays available in the app.

The loan is sent by M-Pesa to your own registered line.

6. Repaying

6.1 How to pay

Repay from the app (tap Repay on the loan and approve the M-Pesa prompt on your phone for the amount you choose) or through Niazime's M-Pesa Pay Bill [TO CONFIRM (GK): Pay Bill number, not yet issued], using your loan number as the account number. You may pay in parts. Please pay from your own registered line; payments from another line are reviewed.

A payment to your Niazime account number while you have a loan running is applied to that loan.

6.2 Paying early

You may repay early, in full or in part, at any time, free of charge.

If you repay in full before the due date, the interest for the days you did not use comes off what you owe. The days you used (a part day counts as a full day, with a minimum of one day) are charged pro rata at the rate for the shortest term on offer that covers them, on your own pricing step. We never keep more than was deducted, and the interest we keep is rounded down to the shilling. The app shows the "clear it today" amount on your loan and in the pay prompt.

Example. You borrow KES 1,500 for 20 days at 23%, so KES 345 interest is deducted at payout. You repay in full on day 10. The shortest term covering 10 days is the 20-day term, so we keep 10/20 of KES 345, rounded down: KES 172. The other KES 173 comes off what you owe, and you clear the loan with KES 1,327.

6.3 Money we send back

We do not hold customer money.

• A payment made when you have no loan for it to go to, and any amount you pay beyond what is owed, is sent straight back by M-Pesa to the line that paid it, less Safaricom's charge for sending it (nothing under KES 100; KES 5 up to KES 1,500; KES 9 up to KES 5,000). We keep nothing else, and the line that paid is told by SMS.

7. If you do not repay on time

• Nothing is added. No late fee, penalty or extra interest is ever added: the amount you owe stays the figure on your agreement, however late you are, and you may pay it in parts.
• Reminders. We remind you 2 days before the due date, on the due date, 3 days after it, and then weekly. We contact only you about your loan — never your family, friends or employer.
• No new loans. From day 34 after the due date, you cannot take a new loan until the overdue loan is settled.
• Non-performing. A 20-day loan becomes non-performing when any amount is unpaid more than 30 days after the due date; a 40- or 61-day loan, more than 90 days after. This is also stated in your loan agreement.
• Credit bureau. An unpaid loan may be listed with TransUnion after the notice described in section 4.
• Recovery. We never seek more than the law allows. In practice we ask only for the loan amount still unpaid.
• Write-off. A loan unpaid for more than 180 days may be written off in our books. You still owe it and may still repay it, and we will update the bureau when you do.

8. Referrals

Share your referral code with a friend. When a friend you referred qualifies, you get KES 100 off your next loan. Your friend qualifies when they have been verified, passed our loan assessment, repaid a loan on time, and we have earned at least KES 200 from their loans. The KES 100 comes off the amount you repay on your next loan: you receive the same amount on M-Pesa and owe KES 100 less. One reward is used per loan; any others wait for your following loans. The reward is never paid in cash or credited to a balance. You may not refer yourself or an account we identify as linked to you. We tell you how many people have joined with your code and what rewards you have earned; we never show you anything about a friend's loans or repayments, and we never show a friend your details.

9. Your data

We collect and use your personal information as described in our separate Privacy Policy, which forms part of this agreement. We never read your contacts, photos, call logs or SMS. The service providers we use, such as Safaricom, TransUnion and our hosting and messaging providers, are named in the Privacy Policy.

10. Our liability to you

We will take reasonable care to keep Niazime working correctly and your payments and data secure. We are not responsible for failures caused by your mobile network, your device, or events outside our reasonable control (including Safaricom or M-Pesa outages). Nothing in this section limits any right you have under Kenyan consumer protection law that cannot lawfully be excluded.

11. Changes to these Terms

Any change to our prices or loan terms needs the prior written approval of the Central Bank of Kenya. We give you at least 30 days' notice by SMS or in-app notice before any change to these Terms takes effect. A change never alters a loan you have already signed for. Continuing to use Niazime after a change takes effect means you accept it.

12. Complaints

For any question or complaint, use Help & complaints in the app, email info<at>niazime.com, or call +254 738 631 213.

• You get a reference number straight away.
• We acknowledge your complaint in writing within 7 days.
• If you complain by phone or in person and it is not resolved there and then, we confirm it in writing within 48 hours.
• We give you our decision, with reasons, within 30 days.

You can follow each complaint and our answer in the app. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may escalate it to the Central Bank of Kenya (www.centralbank.go.ke). For a data protection matter you may also go to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner.

13. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of Kenya. Any dispute will first be addressed in good faith between you and us through the complaints process in section 12. If it is not resolved within 30 days, either of us may take it to the Central Bank of Kenya, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (for a data matter), or the courts of Kenya. Nothing here stops you from going to a regulator at any time.

14. Definitions

• Line check — the KES 1 M-Pesa payment you approve, and we send straight back, to show you control your M-Pesa line.
• Loan amount (principal) — the amount you borrow and repay on the due date, before interest is deducted.
• Interest — the flat share of the loan amount deducted at payout; the only charge.
• Due date — the last day of your loan term.
• Pricing step — the rate column that applies to you, based on how many loans you have repaid on time and in full.
• Non-performing — a loan unpaid past the period in section 7.
• Key information document — the summary of a loan's cost and terms shown before you accept it.

15. Contact

• Niazime Limited, Company No. PVT-EY1BV5PB
• Registered office: Woodvale Place, Woodvale Grove, Westlands, Nairobi
• Post: P.O. Box 65 - 90302, Kathonzweni
• Phone: +254 738 631 213
• Email: info<at>niazime.com (data protection: dpo<at>niazime.com)
• Web: www.niazime.com; app: app.niazime.com

16. The whole agreement

These Terms, the Privacy Policy and the loan agreement you sign for each loan are the whole agreement between you and Niazime. The FAQ in the app and our messages to you explain how things work but do not change these Terms; if they ever differ, these Terms apply. If a court finds any part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.