Nairobi, Feb. 19 -- The number of ordersin listed shareshas grown by nearly four times on the rise of micro-transactions under the new M-Pesa shares trading platform.

Data from the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) shows the number of share orders grew to 26,169 on Monday this week, 3.8 times more than the 6,761 deals recorded prior to the start of shares trading through M-Pesa on February 4.

Before the launch of the Ziidi Trader last week, the number of equity deals at the Nairobi bourse averaged below 7,000 transactions per day.

The new M-Pesa shares deals have been described as micro-trades given their low value with the combination of the transactions averaging about two percent of total market turnover daily as per data seen by th...