Airtel Money customers can now send money from their wallets straight into accounts at 30 banks, SACCOs and microfinance banks. Airtel Money Kenya announced the service on 11th November 2026. It runs on Pesalink, the network that links accounts at different Kenyan banks.
Pesalink is run by Integrated Payment Services Limited (IPSL), a subsidiary of the Kenya Bankers Association. You’ve probably used it without knowing the name. When your bank app sends money to an account at another bank and it lands almost straight away, even at night or on a weekend, that is usually Pesalink.
How to send
In the MyAirtel app, pick Pay Bill, choose the bank, enter the account number and the amount, then confirm. Without the app, dial *334#. Before the transfer goes through, you can check the receiving bank’s name and the account details. Airtel calls this account verification. So you have a chance to catch a mistyped account number before the money leaves your wallet.
What’s new here
Airtel Money could already send money to some banks. In November 2023 it published a pay bill and wallet-to-bank tariff. KCB and Airtel have also long allowed free transfers between KCB accounts and Airtel wallets, as we noted when Airtel Money users got access to KCB agents in June.
With Pesalink, Airtel connects to the network once and reaches the participating institutions through it, without a separate technical integration and agreement with each one. That opens the door to SACCOs and microfinance banks too: a SACCO on Pesalink doesn’t need its own arrangement with Airtel to receive money from an Airtel Money customer.
Thirty is still short of Pesalink’s full reach. IPSL’s website counts more than 80 participants on the network, a figure that includes fintechs and telcos as well as banks, SACCOs and microfinance banks. So check that your bank or SACCO shows up when you choose a bank in the MyAirtel app or on *334# before you count on this.
What Airtel hasn’t said
Airtel hasn’t published the list of the 30 institutions. It hasn’t given the fee either, and its online tariff page lists only Airtel-to-Airtel, other-network and withdrawal charges. The announcement covers money going from Airtel Money to a bank. It doesn’t say whether money can come the other way, from a bank account into Airtel Money, over the same connection. And it doesn’t say whether a transfer is held to Airtel Money’s KES 250,000 limit per transaction or can go up to Pesalink’s own ceiling of KES 999,999.
The fee matters because Pesalink has become cheap on the bank side. In July we listed 19 banks and microfinance banks charging nothing up to KES 1,000 and a flat KES 20 above that. Airtel’s November 2023 wallet-to-bank tariff works differently. It is free up to KES 100 and then rises in bands, reaching KES 105 for anything from KES 45,001 to KES 250,000, the top band it listed. Under that tariff, sending KES 50,000 from Airtel Money to a bank cost KES 105. If those charges still apply to Pesalink transfers, Airtel Money customers won’t get anything close to the KES 20 that customers of those 19 banks pay.
Airtel follows M-Pesa onto Pesalink
M-Pesa got there first. By September 2025, M-Pesa had a Pesalink mini app that sends up to KES 500,000 to a bank account in one transfer. Airtel Money, which had almost 11% of Kenya’s mobile money subscriptions at the end of March, now has a route of its own at least 14 months later. Michael Bonke, who took over as acting managing director after Anne Kinuthia-Otieno left in July, announced it alongside IPSL chief executive Gituku Kirika.
Airtel Money says the service will also “progressively” extend to cash deposits and withdrawals through Airtel Money agents, and to payments to merchants. It gave no dates for either. We think the agent part means a customer of a participating bank or SACCO could one day deposit or withdraw cash at an Airtel Money agent, much like the deposit-only deal Postbank and Pesalink announced last week for other banks’ customers. If that happens, Airtel’s agents would serve customers of other institutions, the same way KCB’s agents now serve Airtel Money users.
For now, this is a convenience for Airtel Money customers who bank or save with one of the 30. Until Airtel publishes the fee, we’d send a small amount first and check what it cost before moving KES 50,000 this way.
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