Mobile-money friendly
Pay the way you already pay — mobile money from any network, or a card. The prompt comes to your phone, and your PIN stays with your provider — it is never typed into our app.
The name, and the why
Every market has a middleman.
In our markets there has always been a dalali — the go-between who knows both sides. When the middleman can be trusted, everyone trades braver. That’s the person we’re building.
mtu
kati
“Mtu kati” is Kiswahili for “middleman” We put the money there instead — held by rules everyone can read, not promises you have to take on faith.
Mtu Kati is an escrow marketplace: when you buy, your money is held by the platform and released to the seller only when you confirm the deal is done. It isn’t a new idea — it’s the oldest idea in the market, done with software. A middleman both sides can trust, because the holding isn’t a favour. It’s the rule.
We’re building it first for Tanzania — mobile money first, Kiswahili at its heart, prices in shillings — because that’s home, and because trust is local. The app is in careful development now. We would rather launch it right than launch it fast.
Home ground
Built for Tanzania
Not adapted for it — built for it, from the first line.
By Waswahili, for Waswahili
Not translated from somewhere else — built by Waswahili who grew up in this market: the bargaining, the mzigo arriving by bus, the street rhythms that we grew accustomed to.
No hidden fees
The price you see is the price you pay. One small service fee, shown in full before you pay — never buried in the fine print. Prices in shillings, always.
The cloth we cut from
Why it looks like this
The design language is called Kanga Modern. A kanga isn’t just a beautiful cloth — it carries a message woven into the pattern. Ours carries one too:
NavyCalm — the colour of trust, and of held money.
IvoryDaylight at the market — everything in the open.
RoyalThe way forward — links, choices, what to tap next.
GoldMoney — and only money. When you see gold in Mtu Kati, it’s about your shillings.
And the stripe? That’s the kanga itself. It appears only on moments worth celebrating — a finished deal, a welcome, the top of this page.
Written on the wall
What we hold ourselves to
A nervous first-timer always knows where their money is.
The total you see is the total you pay.
Release is your word — nimepokea — never our guess.
Mtu Kati began with a feeling every market-goer knows: sending money into silence, and hoping. We believe the fix is not less humanity in trade — it’s more honesty in the middle of it. So we are building the middleman we always wished was there: one whose only trick is that there is no trick.
It’s early days. The app is still being built — slowly, carefully — and this page will grow as it does. Karibu.
The longer story — the problem, the escrow answer, and the trust system around it — is written down in full in our white paper. Read the white paper →
— BY NUMARAH
Walk with us from day one.
Coming to all platforms — Android, iPhone and the web. Join the waitlist and you’ll hear from us the day the market opens.
Join the waitlist · JiungeOpens your email app · hello@mtukati.com