Google Pay tap-to-pay isn’t available in Kenya, despite a DTB pilot post

Nancy Kilimo, who heads the card centre at Diamond Trust Bank (DTB), wrote on LinkedIn on 6th October that her DTB card had been added to Google Wallet, Google’s payments app for Android phones, as part of a pilot. She said the card was set up by hand through Mastercard, and that she then paid with it without the physical card.

That post is no longer on LinkedIn, and the only surviving account of what it said is a write-up published the next day. Kilimo hasn’t said why it came down, and DTB hasn’t said anything publicly about the pilot.

Google hasn’t announced tap to pay for Kenya either. What most people want to know is whether they can add their own card and tap their phone at a card machine today. Going by Google’s own pages, they can’t yet.

Google Wallet holds your bank cards, plus tickets and loyalty cards. Google Pay is what happens when you pay with one of those bank cards. You unlock the phone and hold it near the card machine, the same way you’d tap a contactless card, and the payment goes through even when the Wallet app isn’t open.

The shop never sees your real card number. When you add a card, Google Wallet creates a separate virtual number for it that only works from that phone. Your bank and the card network, Visa or Mastercard, match that number back to your account when you pay. So the card network has to be part of the setup, which is probably why Mastercard was involved in adding Kilimo’s card.

There’s a second, older version of Google Pay that already works in Kenya. Kenya has been on Google’s list of countries where you can pay online or in apps since at least February 2023. That covers paying on a website or in an app with a card saved to your Google account. It doesn’t let you tap your phone in a shop.

Kenya isn’t on Google’s list yet

For tapping in shops, Google keeps a separate page of supported countries for Google Wallet and tap to pay. You pick your country from a dropdown. Kenya isn’t in the dropdown, and the page says that if your country isn’t listed, “Google Wallet isn’t available in your country yet.”

Some countries around us are on that list. Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia all appear, as do Nigeria and Egypt, but only for the Wallet app, which holds passes and cards that aren’t for payments. Tap to pay is listed for four African countries: South Africa, Morocco, Mauritius and Botswana. South Africa was first, in August 2022.

Even when Kenya gets added, each bank has to sign up as well. On Google’s page of supported payment methods, Kenya has no entry and no Kenyan bank appears. The page also says: “Your bank decides if its cards work with Google Wallet.” So a DTB card working in a pilot tells you nothing yet about cards from Equity, KCB or anyone else.

DTB’s work with Mastercard

DTB and Mastercard already work together on this kind of payment. In November 2024 DTB signed a 10-year agreement with Mastercard to push digital payments in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. In April this year, DTB started selling payment rings and wristbands that link to a DTB debit card and use the same virtual-number system. Google Wallet uses the same idea, with the phone in place of the ring. Because Kilimo said her card was set up by hand, we take it that DTB customers can’t yet add their cards to Google Wallet themselves.

How you can tap your phone in Kenya today

Android owners can already tap to pay through their bank’s own app. KCB launched tap to pay inside the KCB app in 2023 for its Visa cards, and Absa did the same with AbsaPay in 2024. Each of those apps only carries that bank’s cards. Google Wallet would put cards from every participating bank in one place, and would also work on Wear OS smartwatches.

Google Wallet needs Android 9 or newer, a phone with NFC, the short-range radio that card machines read, and a screen lock. It doesn’t work on rooted phones. There’s no Google Wallet app for iPhones, and Apple Pay, Apple’s own wallet, doesn’t list Kenya. In Africa it’s only in Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco and South Africa. We noted in May, when Apple Pay reached Mauritius, that Kenya was still missing.

If Google Wallet does open up in Kenya, the cards are there. Kenya had 13.1 million payment cards in August 2026, 10.65 million of them debit cards, and 57,275 card machines. The Central Bank doesn’t say how many of those machines accept contactless payments.

Google hasn’t given a date for Kenya, and no other Kenyan bank has said anything about Google Wallet. DTB hasn’t said when its customers can add their cards, or whether the pilot covers Visa cards as well as Mastercard.

If the deleted post was right, Google, Mastercard and at least one Kenyan bank have already tested the setup together. That doesn’t put your card into Google Wallet today, and Kenya is still off a tap-to-pay list that South Africa joined in 2022. The two things to watch are Kenya appearing on Google’s country list and your own bank appearing on its supported cards page. Until both happen, paying with an Android phone at the till still means your bank’s own app.