Alongside technology and demand, for years, one of the biggest obstacles to fintech expansion in Africa has been regulation. A startup that wants to expand across borders often has to apply for a brand-new license in every country it enters, even when the rules are almost identical. That means months of paperwork, legal fees, and compliance reviews that can slow expansion to a crawl. But now, Kenya and Rwanda are trying to tear down that wall.
The Central Bank of Kenya and the National Bank of Rwanda have signed the Kigali Declaration on Fintech License Passporting, a framework that allows payment service providers licensed in one country to operate in the other without going through a full licensing process again.
The agreement was signed on March 11 during the Inclusive FinTech Forum 2026, and it’s designed to remove one of the most frustrating barriers fintech companies face when scaling across Africa.
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At its core, the framework introduces what regulators call “license passporting.” In practice, that means a payment provider approved in Kenya could enter Rwanda’s market using its existing license, while Rwandan fintech firms could do the same in Kenya. Instead of repeating the same regulatory checks twice, the two countries will recognise each other’s approvals, dramatically reducing the time and cost needed to launch services across borders.
This comes at a time when digital payments are already booming in both markets. Kenya is widely considered one of Africa’s mobile money powerhouses, largely due to services like M-Pesa, which helped turn mobile payments into an everyday part of the economy. The country now has more than 90 million registered mobile money accounts.
Rwanda, meanwhile, has rapidly expanded its own digital finance ecosystem. According to a report from Minecofin, the number of adults holding registered mobile money accounts has also shot up from 60% (4.3 million) in 2020 to 77% (5.8 million) in 2024.
Bringing these two ecosystems closer together could unlock a much larger regional market for fintech companies. Firms offering digital wallets, merchant payments, remittances, or fraud protection tools would be able to expand services more quickly, while banks and financial institutions could tap into a broader network of payment solutions.
The real work, however, is only just beginning. A joint technical committee from both central banks will now develop the administrative and regulatory procedures needed to make the framework operational. If those rules fall into place smoothly, the Kenya-Rwanda partnership could become a blueprint for other African countries looking to reduce regulatory fragmentation and make it easier for fintech companies to grow across the continent.
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