An Unsigned Dream: How the Safaricom–Popote Sh1.1 Billion Battle Redrew the Rules of Innovation Partnerships 

In 2018, a Kenyan fintech dream walked into Safaricom’s headquarters with a promise to change how businesses pay and get paid; by 2025, that same dream had become a Sh1.1 billion cautionary tale about what happens when innovation runs ahead of paperwork. 

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The promise: Popote and Safaricom’s big idea

Samuel Wanjohi, founder of Popote Innovations, had spent years building Popote Pay, a digital payments solution meant to simplify how SMEs handle expenses and disbursements. In 2018, Popote and Safaricom engaged on a proposed partnership to integrate Popote Pay into Safaricom’s ecosystem, with a draft agreement that envisaged launching “Popote Pay” on Safaricom’s rails and sharing revenue from the venture. 

Popote delivered a customised Popote Pay solution to Safaricom in May 2018, believing this was the first step in a long-term strategic partnership. Emails were exchanged, drafts circulated, and the language of collaboration filled the air—but the single most important act in contract law never happened: Safaricom never signed the partnership agreement. 

The fallout: From arbitration windfall to courtroom loss

The relationship cooled as Safaricom adjusted its strategy and chose not to proceed with launching Popote Pay. In 2020, Safaricom entered a separate settlement with Popote, reimbursing development costs in full and, in Safaricom’s view, extinguishing any further obligation to the startup. 

A year later, in June 2021, Safaricom launched the M-Pesa Super App and the M-Pesa Business App, triggering outrage at Popote, which believed these apps closely resembled the jointly conceptualised Popote Pay solution and that its ideas had been used without the promised revenue share. Popote went to arbitration, arguing that Safaricom had walked away from the partnership, only to commercialise the concept alone; the arbitrator agreed, finding the apps “similar” and awarding Popote more than Sh1.1 billion—Sh39.2 million in development costs, Sh902.7 million in projected shared revenue, plus costs. 

The High Court’s hard lesson on contracts

Safaricom immediately moved to the High Court to set aside the award, calling it fictitious, speculative and anchored on an unexecuted draft agreement. The telco argued that there was no signed partnership contract, no binding arbitration clause, and that any obligations to Popote had been settled in 2020 when it paid out development costs. 

Justice Peter Mulwa agreed, holding that the 2018 draft partnership—circulated by email and acknowledged by Safaricom—was never signed and therefore could not create enforceable contractual duties or a valid basis for arbitration. The court found that the arbitrator’s reliance on speculative revenue projections for 24 months, unsupported by expert evidence and built on an unsigned contract, “offended principles of contractual certainty, legality and fairness” and clashed with Kenya’s public policy. 

With that, the Sh1.1 billion arbitral award evaporated: the entire process was declared a nullity, the award set aside in full, and each party ordered to bear its own costs. 

Why this matters for innovators

For founders and innovators, Popote’s experience illustrates that “relationship,” “understanding” and “goodwill” are not substitutes for a signed contract. Popote had a working product, a clear value proposition and a powerful would-be partner, but the absence of signatures meant that, in law, the partnership never existed—even though the collaboration felt real in practice. 

Three critical lessons emerge:

• A draft is not a deal: A circulated agreement, even attached to friendly emails, does not become binding until both parties have clearly executed it. 
• Consent to arbitrate must be written and valid: Without a signed contract embedding an arbitration clause, the entire dispute-resolution path can collapse, as happened here. 
• Speculative upside is not compensable: Courts will not enforce massive payouts based on hypothetical future revenues where the underlying contract and evidence are weak. 

The wider impact on tech partnerships

This case will sit in the back of the mind of every corporate legal team the next time a startup walks in with a brilliant idea, and of every founder pitching to a giant. Large firms will see the ruling as a reinforcement of the need for watertight documentation and clear IP ownership terms before pilots, integrations or co-development work begins. 

For innovators, the message is even sharper: never ship code, share architecture, or hand over a customised solution to a prospective partner without a signed agreement that sets out ownership of IP, revenue sharing, dispute resolution, and termination consequences. In Kenya’s vibrant fintech and startup ecosystem, where many collaborations start informally, the Safaricom–Popote saga is now a landmark case—showing that in the battle between vision and documentation, the courts will always side with what is written and signed.