The Ksh 10 Target: Can CBK’s 2028 Pricing Mandate Solve Kenya’s Digital Usage Crisis?

On paper, Kenya looks settled. Financial inclusion sits at about 94%. Accounts are everywhere. Wallets, bank logins, agent networks, all within reach. The narrative has held for years. Access was the problem, and access has been solved.

“Financial inclusion is a journey,” said Jacqueline Jumah, Director of Advocacy & Capacity Development, AfricaNenda Foundation, during a recent panel, and it landed ike a correction. The numbers that dominate headlines only describe entry. They say nothing about what happens after.

The gap shows up in a small, almost throwaway statistic. Only 52% of Kenyans use M-Pesa daily. In a country where mobile money feels embedded in routine life, that figure interrupts the story. It suggests a system that is widely held but unevenly lived.

There is a tendency to treat account ownership as a finish line. It is closer to a doorway. What lies beyond it is harder to measure and less flattering.

Usage Is Where the Story Turns Accounts exist. Activity does not always follow. Jumah framed it plainly: “We still have usage issues.” The point is not that people lack tools. It is that tools are not consistently used in ways that deepen financial engagement. Money moves, but not always through the formal channels that count.

Usage depends on friction. Cost is one layer. Trust is another. Then there is habit, which resists policy.

In rural areas, people still travel to agents or rely on informal exchanges even when digital options exist. The decision is not irrational. It reflects how users weigh cost against certainty. A bus fare and a known outcome can feel safer than a failed transaction and a stalled complaint process.

That last part matters more than it gets credit for. When transactions go wrong, resolution mechanisms are uneven. The formal system promises recourse, but the experience can feel distant, especially outside urban centres. That distance erodes confidence, slowly but persistently.

Cost as a Gatekeeper

The Central Bank’s latest targets cut to the core. Reduce average instant payment costs from KES 28 to KES 10 by 2028. Raise bank account usage from 45% to 60% in the same window.

Those numbers read like technical goals. They are not. They describe the boundary between access and participation.

“Cost is definitely a barrier,” said Gituku Kirika, CEO, Pesalink. He drew comparisons that are hard to ignore. In Brazil and India, person-to-person transfers approach zero cost. In Nigeria, fees sit at the equivalent of KES 2 to KES 4.

Kenya’s pricing sits above that range. Not dramatically, but enough to shape behaviour. A few shillings matter when transactions are frequent and margins are thin.

Lowering costs does more than increase transaction volume. It changes perception. When moving money feels routine rather than calculated, usage follows. Not uniformly, but steadily.

Jumah added a layer that rarely enters policy discussions. Users do not think in categories. “They don’t care whether it’s from a bank or from a wallet. They just need this money moved.”

The System Is Being Reworked in Place The friction is not abstract. It sits in how money moves, how identities are verified, and how systems connect. That is where the current round of changes is focused.

At the centre of this is Pesalink, which has begun rolling out a set of features that map directly to the gaps in usage.

One of the more consequential changes is the move toward alias-based payments. Instead of relying on account numbers and bank details, transactions can be routed using a phone number, national ID, or eventually an email address. It reduces the burden on the user and shifts complexity into the infrastructure.

In practical terms, it moves the system away from account-based routing toward identity-based routing. The question becomes who you are sending money to, not where their funds are held.

“If I’m sending money… I should not care about where money is going,” Kirika said.

There is also a push to make payments work across ecosystems. A customer with funds in a bank account should be able to pay a merchant operating on mobile money without switching channels. The reverse should hold as well. The intention is straightforward. At the point of payment, the underlying system should not matter.

“What we do… we drive an open ecosystem,” Kirika noted. “Any of our participants can transact with one another without… bilaterals.”

This is where the structure begins to change. What is being built is not a product in the usual sense. It is a shared layer, sitting underneath banks, telecoms, and fintechs, handling the movement of funds without requiring each connection to be negotiated separately.

The same logic is being applied to agent networks. Today, a single shop can serve as an agent for 5 different providers, each operating independently. The result is visible duplication without broader reach.

“That retailer has been onboarded by 5 entities… I wish it was just done by 1,” Kirika said.

Opening those networks allows customers to transact at any agent, regardless of provider. It does not add infrastructure. It redistributes access across what already exists.

Then there is the issue of bank transfers themselves. The process remains cumbersome, often requiring multiple fields while mobile money reduced transactions to a single input. Simplifying this is less visible but no less important. It is an attempt to bring bank-based payments into everyday use rather than leaving them as occasional tools.

Taken together, these adjustments point in one direction. The system that expanded access is now being reworked to reduce friction in actual use.

Interoperability Still Has Edges

Kenya’s payments landscape is often described as interconnected. That description holds at the surface. Underneath, fragmentation persists.

Banks operate in one loop. Mobile money platforms in another. Transfers across these systems are possible, but they are not always seamless.

The divide shows up in everyday decisions. Users still consider where their money sits before making a payment. That pause is a form of friction.

Efforts to connect these systems more deeply are underway. The aim is to remove the need for users to navigate institutional boundaries. But integration is not just technical. It requires alignment across competing players, each with their own incentives.

The architecture is evolving. The behaviour it supports will take longer to catch up.

The State’s Role, Still Unsettled

Kenya’s government has generally been credited with enabling financial inclusion. Regulation has allowed innovation to expand, sometimes ahead of other markets.

The next phase demands a different posture.

Jumah pointed to models where central banks play a more direct role in payment systems. Pix in Brazil is one example. TIPS(Tanzania Instant Payment System) offers a regional reference. In both cases, the regulator is not just overseeing. It is embedded in the system’s operation.

“I think there’s an opportunity for the central bank to… be part of the payment system,” she said.

The argument is not about control. It is about coordination. A national layer, governed with public oversight, could reduce costs, standardise rules, and align incentives across participants.

Debt, Trust, and the Edges of Inclusion

The conversation often returns to access because it is easy to measure. The harder questions sit further along the chain.

Digital credit is one of them. Adoption has been rapid. Repayment has not kept pace. Around 83% of digital loans are not being repaid, according to data referenced during the discussion.

That figure carries weight. It suggests that access to credit has outpaced the structures needed to sustain it. Financial inclusion, in this sense, expands risk as much as opportunity.

Trust absorbs the impact. When users feel trapped in cycles of borrowing and default, their relationship with formal systems changes. They engage, but cautiously.

An Unfinished System

Kenya’s financial infrastructure is often presented as a success story. That description holds, but only in part.

Access has been extended. That was the first task. The second is more complex. It involves cost, interoperability, trust, and the everyday decisions users make.

The system is functional. It is not yet settled.

There is a tendency to look for a single lever that will push inclusion forward. Lower costs will help. Better integration will matter. Stronger coordination may follow. None of it works in isolation.

The numbers will continue to improve. They tend to. The question is whether they begin to reflect lived reality, not just access.