FINTECH
The CBK's own survey says the banks are already fintechs
96% run a mobile app or USSD, 84% of commercial banks and 79% of microfinances have deployed APIs, and two-thirds keep a dedicated innovation team — but only 8% describe themselves as digital-native, against 71% who are "better banks" upgrading what they already had. Half have adopted AI somewhere: 66% of commercial banks, 57% of microfinance banks, 43% of digital credit providers, mostly for credit risk (65%), cybersecurity (54%) and customer service (43%) — yet just 30% have a written AI strategy. Lending is the least digitised function, admitted by over a third. And the digital credit market has exploded: licensed lenders more than doubled from 85 at end-2023 to 195 at end-2025, outstanding loans up 99.6% to about KSh110 billion across 6.74 million active accounts.
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FINTECH
KCB's Pesapal stake is 22.23%, and Tanzania told us
The size of the holding was withheld when the investment was announced in November 2025; it surfaced in Tanzania's Fair Competition Commission review of the deal. Pesapal runs payments and merchant software — ordering, billing, inventory, settlement — across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Zambia. It follows KCB taking 75% of Riverbank Solutions in 2025, which supplies agency banking and payment rails, and the shape of the strategy is clear enough: own the merchant payment layer, then lend against what it sees. The price was not disclosed. One loose thread from KCB's own accounts — Pesapal owed the bank KSh1.2 billion as of December 2025, and nobody has explained how that sits alongside the equity.
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INFRASTRUCTURE
EPRA lifts the ceiling that punished busy charging stations
Gazetted on 18 September, the amendment scraps the 200–15,000 kWh monthly band introduced in 2023, under which any charging operator crossing 15,000 kWh dropped onto commercial rates with demand charges — a rule that penalised exactly the sites that were working. In its place is an "Energy Consumption Threshold" set from a customer's previous six months of usage, or first three months for new connections, with consumption allowed above it while keeping the preferential time-of-use rates of KSh16 per kWh standard and KSh8 off-peak. For a network operator planning depots, the cap was a reason not to scale; that reason is gone.
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FINTECH
Standard Bank has R21 billion of optionality and a Kenyan problem
The group is sitting on roughly R21 billion — about KSh166.7 billion — for acquisitions, partnerships, dividends or buybacks, not earmarked for Kenya but available to it. Stanbic Bank Kenya is sixth by size here while the combined East African operation ranks third regionally, and it posted KSh6.6 billion after tax with assets up 27% to KSh602 billion in the first half. The awkward part is method: Standard Bank prefers organic growth, corporate and investment banking first and retail later, on a decade-long view toward universal banking — while Nedbank bought 66% of NCBA and Absa bought out its Kenyan minorities. Michael Mutiga, confirmed as CEO this month, inherits a stated ambition to be Kenya's largest bank by 2030 and a strategy that does not obviously get there.
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POLICY
Nearly all of the Kenya Digital Token sits in twenty wallets
KDT launched in July 2025 on Solana pitched around national identity, youth empowerment and financial inclusion. Bubblemaps found about 150 connected wallets holding 20% of supply — some $60 million — shortly after launch; current data puts 98.99% of supply in the twenty largest wallets. De.Fi scores it 47/100, flagging no trading pairs found and dump risk from private concentration, while Solflare notes circulating-supply figures that disagree across trackers, making the thing effectively unvaluable. It is privately built. ICT Cabinet Secretary William Kabogo promoted it on X days after launch, though nothing shows government involvement or any link to the concentrated wallets — and no virtual asset service provider is licensed in Kenya to operate it.
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