When a mobile money provider or payment platform starts to crack, Kenyan customers can lose access to their money fast. The Central Bank of Kenya wants the authority to step in before that happens. Under the draft National Payment System Bill, 2026, the CBK would gain powers to intervene when a payment company fails to meet its obligations to customers, breaches regulatory requirements, or poses a threat to financial stability.
The proposed law would allow the regulator to take control of a struggling business before it reaches liquidation, at the point when it still has assets and operations worth saving. The CBK could appoint a statutory manager with the authority to run or sell the company outright. Founders, significant shareholders, and senior officers would lose their powers the moment that manager steps in, unless the manager chooses to let them continue.
The CBK would also be able to remove officials it considers responsible for a company's decline, block the firm from taking on new payment business or agents, and appoint a director who cannot be removed without the central bank's sign-off. These are sweeping controls, and they would apply across the payment ecosystem, covering both payment service providers and payment system operators.
The stakes are real for everyday users. When a payments company cannot settle what it owes, the ripple effects hit merchants waiting on sales proceeds, customers mid-transfer, and financial institutions expecting funds to arrive. The bill puts the CBK at the center of managing those moments of failure.
The draft bill has not yet passed into law, but the shape of it signals where Kenya's financial regulators are heading: closer oversight, earlier intervention, and far less tolerance for letting troubled fintechs sort themselves out.
Originally published by TechCabal.