Kenya’s digital payments landscape is taking a significant leap forward with the announcement of a new partnership between payments technology company Cellulant and PesaLink, the national interbank transfer network operated by Integrated Payment Services Limited (IPSL). The collaboration integrates Cellulant’s payment platform, Tingg, with PesaLink’s real-time transfer network to deliver direct, instant bank-to-merchant payments. This move seeks to address long-standing inefficiencies in the country’s payment ecosystem, particularly around reconciliation, delays, and fragmented payment channels.
Addressing Core Payment Challenges
For years, Kenyan consumers and businesses have had to navigate complex workarounds to complete transactions, often transferring funds from bank accounts to mobile wallets before paying merchants. By enabling direct account-to-merchant transfers, the partnership eliminates these extra steps, cutting out delays and ensuring instant settlement. Beyond convenience, the collaboration aims to reduce reconciliation errors by assigning unique transaction identifiers, giving merchants more transparent and reliable payment flows.
Strategic Vision from Both Sides
Plounne Oyunge, Chief Growth Officer at PesaLink, highlighted the broader implications of the partnership for Kenya’s economy. He explained that PesaLink was built to simplify payments and improve trust in digital commerce, noting that integrating with Cellulant’s platform addresses pain points around tracking and reconciliation while empowering merchants with seamless payment options. Michael Muriuki, Vice President of Group Innovation and Software Engineering at Cellulant, emphasized that the company’s mission is rooted in removing friction from payments. He stated that transforming how money moves can accelerate business growth, improve consumer access, and ultimately strengthen communities by building trust and enabling innovation.
Beyond Consumer Payments: A Shift to Enterprise Value
While mobile money has dominated Kenya’s consumer market, accounting for over 91 percent penetration with Safaricom’s M-Pesa holding a near-monopoly, the next frontier lies in business-to-business transactions. Large enterprises, suppliers, and payroll systems face persistent challenges with bulk disbursements and reconciliation, areas where traditional mobile money platforms have struggled to scale effectively. By combining Cellulant’s merchant-focused infrastructure with PesaLink’s high-value interbank transfer system, the partnership is positioned to unlock solutions for complex B2B payments, a critical growth area in Kenya’s evolving digital economy.
Strengths of the Partners
Cellulant has spent close to two decades building a pan-African payments network that connects businesses, consumers, and financial institutions through a single integration. Its Tingg platform enables MSMEs and large organizations alike to accept payments across multiple channels, bridging fragmented markets and supporting cross-border commerce. On the other hand, PesaLink provides institutional authority and scale, serving as the official interbank payment rail for Kenya’s financial sector. With a transaction cap of KES 999,999 and processing over KES 4 billion daily, it offers secure and high-value transfers that go beyond the scope of mobile money.
Technological Edge and Future Potential
A critical strength of PesaLink lies in its adoption of ISO 20022, a global messaging standard that enriches transaction data and enables advanced services such as Request-to-Pay and automated reconciliation. This technical capability complements Cellulant’s merchant reach and payment orchestration, laying the groundwork for more innovative use cases in Kenya’s financial services. Together, the two companies are setting the stage for enhanced efficiency, transparency, and scalability in digital payments.
The Cellulant-PesaLink partnership marks a pivotal moment in the trajectory of Kenya’s financial ecosystem. By addressing systemic inefficiencies in payments, the collaboration not only improves consumer experiences but also creates opportunities for enterprises to access seamless, secure, and high-value transaction solutions. As Kenya’s mobile money market matures, this strategic convergence represents the next chapter in digital finance, with the potential to reshape how businesses and consumers interact with money in the region.