Kenswitch takes on global payment giants Visa and Mastercard with new local card
Kenswitch has launched a local card scheme that will allow Kenyan banks to issue physical and virtual cards for domestic payments, offering an alternative to international networks such as Visa and Mastercard.
The Kenswitch Card will use the company’s existing infrastructure to connect customers with ATMs, shops, and online payment channels operated by participating institutions.
The move expands Kenswitch’s role from routing transactions between financial institutions to providing a domestic scheme that enables banks to issue and accept payment cards. The company says its network connects more than 2,200 ATMs, 50,000 point-of-sale terminals, and 80,000 agent outlets.
Customers would be able to receive cards from participating institutions, and the company would also develop capabilities to support tap-to-pay payments via smartphones and digital wallets.
“Our domestic card proposition is an important step in strengthening Kenya’s own payments capabilities and giving financial institutions an additional platform for domestic card issuance and transactions,” Kenswitch chief executive John Mukono said.
The launch comes as Kenya’s card acceptance network expands. According to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), there were 13.76 million payment cards in July 2026, including 11.16 million debit cards, 2.26 million prepaid cards, and about 341,000 credit cards. Debit cards, which allow customers to spend money from their bank accounts, make up most of the market.
Payments through POS terminals totalled Sh297 billion in 2025. A calculation using CBK’s monthly figures puts the value at Sh176.9 billion for the first seven months of 2026. These amounts exclude the cash withdrawals.
Kenswitch is seeking to provide financial institutions with a local option while making it easier to introduce new card services.
The company said it was exploring partnerships with technology companies and device manufacturers that could enable customers to load virtual cards onto their devices and make contactless payments.
“We are looking beyond the card itself to how consumers will use payment credentials in the future,” Mukono said.
Such services rely on tokenisation, which replaces sensitive card information with a digital substitute for processing payments. This helps protect the underlying card details when customers shop online or pay through a digital wallet.
Visa says tokenised credentials recorded a 39.4 per cent lower fraud rate than non-tokenised credentials across its global network during its 2025 financial year. The figure reflects Visa’s worldwide experience and is not a forecast for the Kenswitch scheme.
Mastercard is also moving more transactions onto this technology. In June 2025, it said that almost half of its European e-commerce transactions were tokenised, supporting its target of achieving full tokenisation in that market by 2030.
The planned capabilities could give locally issued cards a role in payments even when customers no longer carry a physical card. A bank account could fund a purchase made by phone, with the transaction processed via the domestic scheme.
The scheme will also enter a market where mobile money already has a broad distribution network. CBK recorded 94.35 million registered mobile-money accounts and 575,400 active agents in July. The account figure includes multiple registrations by individual users.
Card networks are increasingly connecting with mobile money services. Mastercard announced a partnership with Safaricom in 2024 to expand payment acceptance and cross-border remittances, targeting more than 636,000 M-Pesa merchants.
