The Next Wave: Kenya’s payments revolution cannot end with mobile money

Kenya's payments revolution cannot end with mobile money. For over two decades, M-Pesa has been a transformative force in financial inclusion, evolving from a simple peer-to-peer transfer tool into a central pillar of Kenyan commerce. By July 2026, Kenya had 94.35 million registered mobile-money accounts, with KES 728.7 billion ($5.6 billion) passing through the network in a single month.

However, this success has led to an intellectual trap where payment innovation is now synonymous with mobile money. Commercial banks, fintechs, and merchants all compete for seamless integration with M-Pesa, while the remainder of Kenya's payments stack receives minimal focus.

Kenswitch's launch of a domestic card scheme is a significant strategic move, raising questions about whether a country building a digital-first economy should own more of the underlying infrastructure driving its commerce. While Kenya already has a sizeable card economy, with 13.76 million payment cards and 56,083 point-of-sale (POS) terminals, much of the infrastructure relies on international card networks like Visa and Mastercard.

These networks enable global interoperability, allowing Kenyan travelers to pay seamlessly abroad. However, should Kenyan consumers also benefit from domestic infrastructure when making local purchases? This distinction has prompted some of the world's largest economies to develop domestic payment schemes alongside global networks.

India's RuPay and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) are examples of domestic payment architectures that integrate banks, fintechs, QR payments, and increasingly cards.