Kenya Rewires Its Payment System

The National Treasury and Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) published a draft National Payment System Policy and Bill 2026 on 21 September [1], which identifies high transaction costs and fragmented payment platforms as key challenges facing consumers and businesses. They want to address these by introducing open-finance data access, new licence categories for e-money issuers and wallets, and trust protection for e-money balances.

The government plans to introduce open application programming interface (API) standards, which would let financial institutions and payment providers connect their systems more easily. It proposes a national instant payment switch modelled on India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix that would enable real-time money transfers across banks, mobile money platforms, and fintech companies.

Banks, payment service providers and payment system operators would also be required to adopt national or global messaging standards to improve how transaction information is exchanged between platforms.