Every Kenyan who has renewed a driving licence, applied for a passport, or registered a business online knows the KES 50 convenience fee. It is the extra charge the government’s eCitizen platform adds on top of the actual cost of any service. For years, it has been one of the most contested charges in Kenya’s digital government infrastructure. Now, Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi wants to replace it with something bigger.
Draft regulations published by the Treasury, titled the Public Finance Management (e-Citizen System Management) Regulations, 2026, propose scrapping the flat KES 50 fee and introducing a tiered system based on the value of the service being paid for. The new structure, first reported by Business Daily, breaks down as follows:
| Service Cost | Convenience Fee |
|---|---|
| Below KES 99 | Free |
| KES 100 – KES 499 | KES 5 |
| KES 500 – KES 9,999 | KES 50 |
| KES 10,000 – KES 99,999 | KES 70 |
| Over KES 100,000 | KES 100 |
On the surface, this looks like a more rational approach. Smaller transactions attract smaller fees, and the very cheapest services are exempt entirely. But the headline number is what matters most: the maximum fee doubles from KES 50 to KES 100.
Why This Matters
eCitizen is not a niche platform. It hosts over 30,000 government services from more than 500 agencies, according to government figures. President William Ruto has said the platform processes roughly KES 2 billion in transactions daily. That volume means even a modest fee increase translates to enormous sums.
For context, private firms operating the platform collected KES 15.9 billion in convenience fees and KES 8.57 billion in maintenance fees in the financial year ending June 2024, according to Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu’s special audit report. Those are staggering figures for what is presented as a simple transaction processing charge.
The timing is also notable. The convenience fee has been the subject of persistent legal challenges. In April 2025, Justice Chacha Mwita struck down the KES 50 fee, ruling it had no legal basis, was discriminatory, and had been imposed without public participation. The Court of Appeal later refused to suspend that ruling, with a bench led by Justice Daniel Musinga dismissing the government’s application. Even the Attorney General, Dorcas Oduor, directed CS Mbadi to comply with the court order halting collection of the fee.
Despite all that, the fee continued to be charged. A contempt of court application was filed against senior government officials for allegedly ignoring the court’s decision.
The Legal Workaround
The draft regulations are, in essence, the government’s attempt to give the convenience fee the legal foundation it has always lacked. The original fee was introduced through a gazette notice in 2014 and never had proper statutory backing. By anchoring the new tiered fee in formal regulations under the Public Finance Management Act, the Treasury is trying to sidestep the court’s objection.
Whether this holds up is an open question. The courts did not just object to the fee’s legal format. Justice Mwita specifically called the charge “irrational and unconscionable,” and noted that no one could adequately explain where the money went. The new regulations address the format problem but do not fully resolve the transparency issue.
The regulations are currently open for public comment. This is significant because the absence of public participation was one of the key reasons the original fee was struck down. The government appears to be ticking the procedural boxes this time around.
Who Actually Runs eCitizen?
This is where the story gets more complicated. The government claims it took full ownership of eCitizen in 2023, but the platform is still operationally run by three private companies. Pesaflow Limited handles payment processing, Webmasters Kenya manages the technical side, and Olivetree Limited handles communications.
Together, these firms earn an estimated KES 100 million to KES 200 million monthly under a maintenance contract with the government. The Auditor-General has flagged serious concerns about this arrangement, noting the absence of a backup system that could leave all government services vulnerable to a cyberattack. She also raised questions about private companies holding sensitive citizen data with limited oversight.
The ownership tussle has been ongoing since at least 2017, when a company called Goldrock Capital sued Safaricom and the Treasury over who had the right to collect eCitizen funds. Court files in that case were tampered with and filings removed. Multiple senators have demanded audits of the convenience fee, with Narok Senator Olekina calling the money flow “mysterious” and demanding parliamentary scrutiny.
What This Means for Ordinary Users
For most Kenyans, the practical impact depends on which services they use. Someone paying for a service under KES 99, like certain county-level permits, will actually pay less than before. But anyone dealing with mid-range or high-value services will pay more.
Take passports. The government phased out the 34-page booklet in July 2025 and withdrew the 50-page option in February 2026. The only ordinary passport now available on eCitizen is the 66-page version, which costs KES 12,500. That falls squarely in the KES 10,000 to KES 99,999 bracket, meaning the convenience fee jumps from the old flat KES 50 to KES 70. It is not a dramatic increase on its own, but it compounds an already significant price hike on the passport itself. For land-related transactions, company registrations, or other services above KES 100,000, the fee doubles outright.
These charges also do not exist in isolation. They stack on top of mobile money transaction fees that Kenyans already pay when making payments via M-Pesa or other platforms. A passport applicant paying KES 12,500 through M-Pesa is already absorbing a transaction cost before the convenience fee is even added. The cumulative effect is what frustrates most users.
The real concern is not any single transaction. It is the principle: the government is charging citizens a fee to access its own services digitally, and the money flows to private companies whose contracts with the government have been repeatedly questioned by auditors and the courts.
The draft regulations also propose that all national and county government entities on eCitizen stop operating their own revenue bank accounts. All collections would flow through the platform instead. This centralisation could improve oversight, but it also makes the private companies running eCitizen even more critical to the country’s financial infrastructure.
What Happens Next
The regulations are open for public comment. Given the legal history, the quality and volume of public participation will likely determine whether the new fee structure survives judicial scrutiny. Kenyans who have opinions on the matter can submit them through the formal process.
The courts have not finished with this issue either. The government’s appeal against Justice Mwita’s ruling is still pending. If the appellate court upholds the original decision, the legal basis for even the new tiered fee could be called into question.
For now, the KES 50 fee remains in legal limbo, the draft regulations are on the table, and the private companies behind eCitizen continue to operate a platform that processes billions of shillings of public money daily.
