KCB Bank Kenya has announced that, effective immediately, sending money on Pesalink will cost a flat KES 20 for any amount between KES 1,000 and KES 999,999. Transactions below KES 1,000 will be completely free. The change applies across KCB’s mobile and internet banking channels.
It is a clean, simple price. And for a bank with the largest customer base in the country, it matters. But the framing in KCB’s own announcement, that this is a KCB initiative, is only half true. The flat KES 20 pricing is an industry-wide campaign called “Tuma Direct na 20/-“, coordinated by Integrated Payment Services Limited (IPSL), the company that runs Pesalink on behalf of the Kenya Bankers Association. KCB is joining a queue that other banks have already entered.
What is actually happening here
Pesalink, launched in 2017, lets you send money directly between bank accounts in real time, 24/7, in amounts from KES 10 up to KES 999,999. For years, each bank set its own Pesalink fees, often in tiers that ranged from free to over KES 500 depending on the amount. The tier system was confusing. You rarely knew what you were paying until the confirmation screen showed up.
IPSL has been pushing the industry toward a single, standard price. Under “Tuma Direct na 20/-“, participating banks waive fees on anything below KES 1,000 and charge a flat KES 20 for everything above that, up to the per-transaction ceiling of KES 999,999.
SBM Bank moved first, branding its rollout “Tuma na Mbao”. DTB followed in late April. GTBank made a partial move back in March, dropping fees below KES 1,000 to zero and capping the highest band at KES 20, but keeping a KES 5 mid-tier. KCB joining on 11 May 2026 is the biggest endorsement so far, because KCB is the largest commercial bank in Kenya by branch network and customer count.
Why this is good news, and for whom
The real winners are small businesses and anyone who moves money between banks regularly. Take a quick comparison. Sending KES 50,000 to a supplier via M-Pesa costs KES 108, which is Safaricom’s flat ceiling for any send above KES 20,001. Sending the same KES 50,000 from a KCB account to, say, an Equity account via Pesalink now costs KES 20. That is an 81% saving on a single transaction. Scale that across a month of supplier payments and the difference is meaningful.
For individuals, the under-KES-1,000 free tier is the quiet win. Sending KES 500 to a friend, paying a fundi, or splitting a bill no longer has a transaction cost attached, provided the recipient has a bank account at a participating institution.
There is a catch worth naming. Pesalink is a bank-to-bank rail. It does not move money to or from an M-Pesa wallet directly, even though M-Pesa and Pesalink have been integrating over the past year. For most everyday Kenyan transactions, M-Pesa is still the default because that is where the money sits. The flat KES 20 only helps you if you and the person you are paying are both operating from bank accounts.
The banks that have not moved yet
This is where the picture gets uneven. Equity, Co-operative Bank, Absa, Stanbic, NCBA, and Standard Chartered have not publicly committed to the flat KES 20 structure as of this writing. Several of them still use the old tiered model, where a KES 50,000 transfer can cost anywhere from KES 50 to KES 150 depending on the bank.
The pricing inconsistency creates a strange dynamic. A KCB customer sending KES 50,000 to an Equity customer pays KES 20 on the send side. But the recipient bank’s pricing only matters in reverse, when the Equity customer wants to send back. Until the laggards move, customers at non-participating banks effectively subsidise the slowness of their own bank’s pricing decisions.
The bigger context
Pesalink has been busy. In February, the network plugged into the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, allowing instant cross-border transfers in local currencies without routing through the US dollar. We covered that integration here, including the awkward question of why a bank-backed switch took nearly a decade to think this big.
The KES 20 push is part of the same waking-up moment. After years of letting M-Pesa dominate everyday payments while Pesalink sat as a reluctant cousin used mostly for big transfers, the banks are finally pricing their rail in a way that competes for daily transactions. Whether customers actually shift behaviour is a different question. M-Pesa’s habit advantage is enormous, and the integration between the two systems means many people will keep ending up on M-Pesa regardless.
What KCB’s move signals, though, is that the holdouts are now under pressure. When the country’s largest bank standardises at KES 20, the others have to explain why they are still charging more.
