Kenya's central bank is drafting new rules that would require any investor taking a stake of 10% or more in a licensed payment company to get written approval from the Central Bank of Kenya before the deal can close. The proposal is part of a broader overhaul of the country's fintech law, the draft National Payment System Bill, 2026, which would also create separate licensing categories for electronic wallets, payment gateways, and money remittance providers.
On paper, the intent is to bring Kenya's payments sector in line with the kind of regulatory oversight already standard in banking. The CBK says the wider reforms are designed to encourage competition in a sector long dominated by banks and telcos, while tightening controls around capital, ownership, and management. The direction makes sense for a maturing industry. The execution, though, is raising questions.
The sticking point is time. The draft bill does not specify how quickly CBK must respond to an approval request. That gap matters enormously for founders. A startup that has secured an investor's commitment still cannot count on the money until the regulator signs off, and any company running low on cash during that wait has a problem it cannot solve on its own.
Agnes Aistleitner, managing partner of First Circle Capital, is direct about what this means in practice. She tells Afropolitain that the proposal adds complexity and costs to investing in Kenya, a market she describes as already expensive and not yet among the most lucrative for fintech beyond Safaricom and a handful of others. "Ultimately, I think it raises the bar for investment opportunities in Kenya," she says.
The bill is still in draft form, which means there is room for the timeline question to be addressed before anything becomes law. Whether regulators move to close that gap will say a lot about how serious the CBK is about making the sector genuinely open for business.
Originally published by TechCabal.