Version 2026-09-24. Reviewed by counsel against the Consumer Protection Act, the CBK Digital Credit Providers Regulations and the Data Protection Act 2019.
These Terms are an agreement between you and Niazime Limited ("Niazime", "we", "us"), governing your use of the Niazime app and website. Niazime is an independent Kenyan 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. We operate a marketplace that connects people who want to borrow small amounts for short periods with people who want to lend their own money and earn a return. When you borrow, your loan is funded by another Niazime user (or, where no user offer is available, by Niazime's own capital). When you lend, you are lending your own money at your own risk, subject to the guarantee described in section 7.3.
To register, you must:
We verify your identity against the government identity registry and a live selfie check. Because the selfie is biometric data, we ask for your explicit consent, by a separate tick, immediately before the check; it does not run without it. We do not keep the video or selfie image itself — only the verification result.
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 your registration will be reviewed by a person before you can transact, 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, you must tell us promptly through Help & complaints in the app.
One person may hold one Niazime account, and may use it to both borrow and lend. You are responsible for keeping your phone, your Niazime PIN and the one-time codes we send you secure. Your 4-digit PIN opens the app and confirms withdrawals, 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. If you sign in from a phone we have not seen before after more than 90 days away, we also ask for the number of the document you registered with, 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, withdrawals and 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 (as borrower or lender) and your wallet balance is zero. 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, at our discretion, including where we reasonably believe you have provided false information, are attempting to defraud Niazime or another user, or are in breach of these Terms.
We grant you a personal, non-transferable right to use the Niazime app and website for your own borrowing and lending. You may not copy, modify or reverse-engineer the app; run scripts, bots or any automated means to read the marketplace or to post offers, requests or instructions; 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, without prejudice to any loan you have taken or funded, which 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.
An account with no sign-in and no transaction for 12 months is dormant. Your money stays yours: a dormant wallet balance and any principal that returns from a loan you funded remain in your wallet, and we send a reminder to your registered number before the account becomes dormant and again while it stays dormant. To use a dormant account again you sign in and confirm your identity as described above; a dormant account is not closed for dormancy alone. Where a balance remains unclaimed for the period set by the Unclaimed Financial Assets Act, we are required to report it and pay it over to the Unclaimed Financial Assets Authority, from which you or your estate can claim it at any time; we will tell you by SMS before doing so. [Counsel to confirm: whether Niazime is a "holder" under the Unclaimed Financial Assets Act 2011, the applicable dormancy period (the Act sets different periods by asset class), and the annual reporting date.]
If we receive a death certificate together with a grant of letters of administration or probate, we freeze the account. The wallet balance, and any principal still to be returned on loans the account funded, are paid to the estate through the personal representative; the guarantee in section 7.3 continues to apply to those loans. A loan the account had taken remains owed by the estate, without any late fee or extra interest, and we do not pursue family members personally. The estate's representative may ask for the account statement and the data export described in section 10. [Counsel to confirm the documents we may rely on under the Law of Succession Act and the position where the estate is too small for a grant.]
Before you can borrow or lend, you must pay a one-time KES 10 activation deposit by M-Pesa. This is not a fee.
The deposit exists to discourage accounts opened without genuine intent to use the platform, and to help cover the cost of verifying you.
Loans are available in amounts of KES 300 or more, in multiples of KES 10, for a fixed term of 10, 20, or 30 days, at a flat rate of 10%, 20%, or 30% of the principal for the respective term.
Each loan is a separate agreement. Before you request a loan we show you the exact amount you will receive, every deduction, the amount and date of repayment, and the effective annual rate. You sign for the loan by entering the one-time code we send to your registered number after you have seen those terms; that entry is your electronic signature. A copy of the agreement, showing the terms you signed for and the time and reference of your signature, is available in the app for every loan, for you and for the lender.
Interest is deducted upfront. Before your loan is disbursed, we show you exactly what you will receive and exactly what you must repay — for example, a KES 1,000 loan for 10 days pays out KES 885 (KES 1,000 principal, less KES 100 interest, less a KES 15 transfer fee) and you repay KES 1,000. Nothing further is owed if you repay on time. This figure is shown to you before you confirm the loan and is not renegotiated afterward.
Your limit is set by your score — based on your M-Pesa statement and a short questionnaire — and starts at KES 300. It rises as you build a track record with us: each time the loans you have repaid in full and on time have earned Niazime enough to justify extending more credit, your limit doubles, up to the ceiling your score allows. Requesting an amount above your current limit will be declined.
A loan request stays open until a lender funds it, so long as you continue to meet the requirements in this section. If your circumstances change while a request is open — for example, your account is blocked under section 7 — the request is withdrawn automatically.
Repay from the app (tap Repay on the loan: an M-Pesa prompt appears on your phone for the amount you choose) or via M-Pesa Paybill, using your loan's own ID as the account number. Either way your payment is applied to the correct loan. Any amount you pay beyond what is owed on that loan is credited to your Niazime wallet, not lost or bounced back.
If your loan is not repaid by its due date:
We do not currently report defaults to a Credit Reference Bureau. A default on Niazime affects your ability to use Niazime, not your credit standing elsewhere. [Open decision: confirm this stays the policy, or whether CRB reporting is added later — if added, this section must be rewritten and you must be told before it happens, not after.]
You can post a lend offer for any amount of KES 300 or more from your available balance, and set the longest loan term and the lowest borrower grade you're willing to fund. An unmatched offer is automatically released back to your available balance after 10 minutes. You can also fund a specific open borrow request directly.
You receive 35% of the interest on any loan you fund, paid into your wallet the moment the loan is disbursed — not when the borrower repays. 15% withholding tax is deducted from your share and remitted to KRA, as required by Kenyan tax law.
If a loan you funded defaults and remains unpaid, your principal is guaranteed back to you 90 days after the original due date, from Niazime's guarantee reserve. You keep the interest you earned at disbursement; the guarantee returns your principal only.
You may not fund your own loan request. If our systems identify that you and a borrower are likely the same person or household — for example, a shared device or phone — we will decline the match. Repeatedly funding the same borrower does not stop the match but may prompt a review.
A withdrawal fee of KES 15 to KES 40, depending on the amount, applies when you move money from your Niazime wallet to M-Pesa. The exact fee is shown before you confirm any withdrawal. We will notify you by SMS or in-app message before any change to our fee structure takes effect.
Share your referral code with a friend. You earn KES 100 once the person you referred has been verified, scored as eligible, and has built up enough on-time repayment history with us. The reward is not tied to a fixed number of loans; it is earned once your friend's borrowing has covered its cost. The reward is applied automatically to the principal of your next loan — one reward per loan. You may not refer yourself or an account we identify as linked to you.
We collect and use your personal information as described in our separate Privacy Policy, which forms part of this agreement. By using Niazime you consent to the collection and use of your data as described there.
We will take reasonable care to keep Niazime working correctly and your money 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 Daraja outages). Nothing in this section limits any right you have under Kenyan consumer protection law that cannot lawfully be excluded.
[This whole section needs a lawyer's drafting, not mine — liability allocation is a real legal and business decision, not something to copy from a competitor's one-sided boilerplate.]
We may update these Terms from time to time. We will tell you by SMS or in-app notice before a change that affects your existing loans or wallet balance takes effect. Continuing to use Niazime after a change is posted means you accept the update.
These Terms are governed by the laws of Kenya. Any dispute will first be addressed in good faith between you and us, starting from the complaints process in section 15; if it is not resolved within 30 days of the complaint being lodged, either of us may take it to the Competition Authority 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.
For any question or complaint about your Niazime account, use Help & complaints in the app. Every complaint is logged in our complaints register, acknowledged by SMS with a reference number, and answered within 30 days of receipt (usually much sooner); you can see the state of each complaint, and our answer, in the app at any time. You can also write to info@niazime.com quoting your member ID or the complaint reference. [A support phone number will be added once decided.]
If you raise a complaint with us and are not satisfied with our response, you may escalate it to the Competition Authority of Kenya, which handles consumer complaints against licensed digital lenders regarding matters such as loan terms, disclosed charges, and market conduct, via their complaints website (www.cak.go.ke).
If you believe you are dealing with an entity claiming to be Niazime that is not actually licensed, or wish to verify our licensing status, the Central Bank of Kenya's dedicated channel for reporting unlicensed digital credit providers is dcps@centralbank.go.ke.
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.