Booking an international flight from Nairobi can feel like a budgeting exercise disguised as wanderlust. You find a decent fare, pull out your phone, and then M-Pesa reminds you that daily transaction limits exist for a reason. Emirates thinks it has finally found a workaround.
The world’s largest international airline has announced a first-of-its-kind split-payment solution for Kenyan travelers, powered by a strategic partnership with African payments giant Cellulant.
The new capability, enabled by Cellulant’s Tingg payment gateway, debuts first in Kenya with plans to roll out across other African markets in the coming months. The feature is already live on Emirates’ website and allows customers to combine multiple payment methods or stagger payments within a 24-hour window to complete a booking.
In practical terms, this means you can pay for an Emirates flight ticket using a mix of mobile money, mobile banking, and local debit or credit cards. Alternatively, you can make an initial payment and then clear the balance in up to four additional instalments over 24 hours. The idea is simple: stay within provider-imposed per-transaction and daily limits, but still walk away with a confirmed ticket.
Solving the mobile wallet ceiling
Mobile money is the undisputed king of payments in Africa, processing over $1 trillion across 80 billion transactions annually. Yet, platforms like M-Pesa have strict daily and per-transaction limits that actively bottleneck high-value purchases like international airfare. Often, customers are forced to abandon their bookings simply because their wallet provider won’t authorize a lump-sum payment of that size.
“With hundreds of millions of Africans relying on mobile money as their preferred way to pay, extending this convenience to global travel payments is essential,” explains Michael Muriuki, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Cellulant. Muriuki notes that the Tingg integration ensures Emirates customers can complete these high-value transactions “without transaction limits becoming a barrier to access.”
For Emirates, optimizing the checkout flow is a strategic necessity in a highly active region. Christophe Leloup, Emirates’ Country Manager for Kenya, describes the country as “one of the most dynamic markets on our global network.” By integrating split payments, Leloup says the airline can “unlock greater flexibility and convenience, while enabling more customers to access our world-class product and services.”
A stark contrast to local transport tech
While Emirates and Cellulant are utilizing digital tools to remove friction for international travelers, the local transport sector presents a much more complicated relationship with technology.
Right at Emirates’ doorstep at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) is taking a highly controversial approach to mobility tech. As recently detailed, the KAA is actively building a proprietary ride-hailing “Super App” intended to geofence the airport. If deployed, the system could effectively ban established apps like Uber and Bolt from the arrivals terminal, forcing those same international travelers onto a state-backed platform that critics fear will revive the era of KES 3,000 “yellow cab” monopolies. Instead of tech fostering open competition, it’s being leveraged to build a walled garden.
Conversely, out on the notoriously chaotic streets of Nairobi, e-mobility startup BasiGo is demonstrating how tech can be seamlessly integrated into legacy systems rather than fighting them. Through its proprietary “Jenga” partnership model, BasiGo is upgrading existing matatu Saccos (like Citi Hoppa and Embassava) with electric buses and the cashless “Jani” booking app. By relying entirely on M-Pesa for pre-booking guaranteed seats, BasiGo is using the exact same mobile money infrastructure Emirates is tapping into to create a dynamic data feedback loop, taming Nairobi’s transit without displacing the existing operators.
Timing the expansion
The introduction of Emirates’ flexible payment solution is perfectly timed with the airline’s operational expansion. Starting March 1, 2026, Emirates is adding a third daily flight on the highly in-demand Dubai–Nairobi route.
By pairing extra seating capacity with locally aligned, friction-free payment options, Emirates and Cellulant are ensuring that the growing demand for global travel isn’t hindered by the very payment platforms Kenyans use every day. To try out the new split-payment feature, travelers can select the Tingg option at checkout on the Emirates website.
