Nineteen Banks Now Send Money for KES 20 or Nothing on PesaLink. Equity, Co-op and NCBA Still Don’t.

Nineteen banks and microfinance banks now charge nothing on PesaLink transfers of up to KES 1,000, and a flat KES 20 on anything from KES 1,001 up to KES 999,999. Two months ago the number was ten.

Sending KES 50,000 costs KES 108 on M-PESA. At those nineteen institutions it now costs KES 20 on PesaLink. The old pricing charged in tiers that climbed with the amount, reaching as high as KES 250.

Business Daily put the count at nineteen this week. We covered the campaign in May, when KCB became the largest bank to adopt the price and ten institutions had signed up.

First, what PesaLink actually is

PesaLink is a rail, not an app. It is the pipe that carries money instantly from one Kenyan bank account to another, at any hour, including weekends and public holidays. You reach it through your own bank’s app, internet banking or USSD menu, which is why plenty of people have used it without registering the name.

It is run by Integrated Payment Services Limited (IPSL), a company owned by the Kenya Bankers Association. That ownership matters for reading this story. The banks own the rail, so a price change here is the banking industry setting a price for itself. The campaign is branded “Tuma Direct na Mbao”, and some banks have used their own names for it, such as SBM’s “Tuma na Mbao”.

IPSL’s own timeline dates the first live PesaLink transactions to November 2016, with the rollout to customers through 2017. The rail carries transfers from KES 10 to KES 999,999, and IPSL says its network has more than 80 participants, counting banks, SACCOs, fintechs and telcos.

The price, in plain numbers

The tariff is the same at every participating institution:

• KES 1 to KES 1,000: free
• KES 1,001 to KES 999,999: flat KES 20

Set against M-PESA’s published send-money tariff, which has not changed since 2023, the gap widens as the amount grows.

M-PESA figures are from Safaricom’s official consumer tariff page. The KES 50,000 comparison works out at a saving of about 81%. M-PESA also caps a single transaction at KES 250,000 and a day at KES 500,000, while PesaLink moves up to KES 999,999 in one go.

At individual banks the drop is steeper than the KES 250 headline suggests. A tariff review by Business Daily last year found Standard Chartered charging KES 250 for transfers between KES 500,001 and KES 999,999, KCB charging KES 240 above KES 200,000, and Stanbic charging up to KES 200 to move KES 999,999. KCB and Stanbic now charge KES 20.

The full list of banks with free and KES 20 PesaLink transfers

Listed alphabetically so you can find your own bank quickly.

Commercial banks (16)

• Absa Bank Kenya
• Access Bank Kenya
• Bank of Baroda
• Citibank N.A. Kenya
• Commercial International Bank Kenya (CIB, formerly Mayfair Bank)
• Credit Bank
• Diamond Trust Bank (DTB)
• Ecobank Kenya
• Guaranty Trust Bank (GT Bank)
• HFC
• KCB Bank Kenya
• Paramount Bank
• Prime Bank
• SBM Bank Kenya
• Stanbic Bank Kenya
• Victoria Commercial Bank

Microfinance banks (3)

• Caritas Microfinance Bank
• Choice Microfinance Bank
• Faulu Microfinance Bank

Where this list comes from

The list above is as carried by People Daily and circulated in a widely shared thread by the financial commentator Moe (@moneyacademyKE).

We independently confirmed twelve of the nineteen against individual bank announcements and earlier tariff reporting. The seven we could not confirm are Stanbic, HFC, Victoria Commercial Bank, Access Bank Kenya, Citibank N.A. Kenya, CIB Kenya and Faulu. Stanbic is the one to watch: its own published PesaLink fact sheet still shows the old KES 0 to KES 200 range.

Nineteen also sounds broader than it is in practice. Citibank N.A. Kenya and CIB Kenya are corporate and high-net-worth lenders with almost no retail person-to-person customers, so their presence lifts the count without reaching many ordinary senders.

The banks that have not joined

We checked the list against the Central Bank of Kenya’s Bank Supervision Annual Report 2024. By CBK’s weighted market-share measure, the ten largest banks are KCB, Equity, Co-operative Bank, NCBA, Absa, Stanbic, I&M, Standard Chartered, DTB and Prime Bank.

Five of them are in: KCB, Absa, Stanbic, DTB and Prime.

Five are out:

• Equity Bank Kenya
• Co-operative Bank of Kenya
• NCBA Bank Kenya
• I&M Bank
• Standard Chartered Bank Kenya

The split runs straight down the middle of the retail market. Equity and Co-operative Bank are the second and third largest lenders on CBK’s measure, and both are heavily retail. Until they move, a large share of Kenyans with bank accounts still pay tiered fees when they send. Standard Chartered, the bank charging the KES 250 this whole campaign is measured against, has not joined either.

The question nobody has answered

Does the recipient’s bank matter? The reporting does not settle it, and the answer changes what many people will pay.

Business Daily’s May report said the discounted price applies to any transaction from a participating bank to another bank, SACCO or fintech wallet. That reads as: only the sender’s institution needs to have signed up.

Its July report says the discounted tariff applies to transactions between participating financial institutions, regardless of the sending or receiving bank. That reads as: both ends need to be in, and it does not matter which is sending.

Those are different rules. Under the first, a KCB customer sending KES 50,000 to an Equity account pays KES 20. Under the second, they do not, because Equity has not signed up. No participating bank has published terms that settle it.

Two other things to know

Both sides need bank accounts. PesaLink is account-to-account. It does not drop money into an M-PESA wallet, though M-PESA and PesaLink have been integrating through a mini app that pushes money from a wallet to a bank account. If the person you are paying keeps their money in a wallet, this changes nothing for you.

Some of it may be a promotion. The wording differs by bank. DTB called it a new pricing model in April. Absa’s June statement described benefits available “during the offer period”. No participating bank has published an end date.

Why the banks are doing this

Transfer fees are small money next to lending. Habit is what the banks are buying. Every payment that runs through a bank account is one that does not run through a wallet, and it keeps the customer’s balance and behaviour inside the banking system. Kenyan banks have been unusually profitable and mobile money is part of why, so losing everyday payments to a telco is a strategic problem more than a revenue one.

Safaricom is not sitting still. This month it began refunding the first send-money charge for people installing My OneApp, a rare fee waiver from a company that almost never discounts M-PESA.

IPSL has also said it plans to let people send using a phone number or ID number instead of an account number, which is the biggest usability gap between PesaLink and M-PESA. Separately, PesaLink connected to the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System in February for cross-border transfers in local currency.

What to do with this

Check whether your bank is among the nineteen. If it is, and you regularly pay suppliers, landlords, school fees or family who hold bank accounts, PesaLink is now materially cheaper than M-PESA above roughly KES 1,000, and the saving grows with the amount. If your bank is not on the list, your old tariff still applies. And until the reciprocity question is answered, watch the fee on your confirmation screen when you send to someone banking with one of the five holdouts.