IN SHORT: The National Bank of Rwanda and the Central Bank of Kenya signed the Kigali Declaration on Fintech Licence Passporting on March 11, allowing payment service providers licensed in one country to operate in the other without restarting the full regulatory process. The deal builds on Rwanda’s earlier passporting agreement with Ghana and sets a template for the East African Community’s broader cross-border payments integration.
Kenya and Rwanda have signed a fintech licence passporting agreement that allows payment service providers licensed in either country to expand into the other without repeating the full licensing process, cutting cross-border expansion timelines from 6 to 18 months to a fraction of that and establishing the most concrete bilateral step yet toward an integrated East African digital payments market.
The Kigali Declaration on Fintech Licence Passporting was signed by National Bank of Rwanda Governor Soraya Hakuziyaremye and Central Bank of Kenya Deputy Governor Gerald Nyaoma on March 11 on the sidelines of the Inclusive FinTech Forum 2026 in Kigali.
- Under the framework, regulators in Kenya and Rwanda will develop mutual recognition of licensing regimes for payment service providers. A fintech company approved in Kenya can expand into Rwanda using its existing regulatory approval, and vice versa, subject to joint oversight by both central banks and minimal additional requirements. A joint technical committee will work out administrative and supervisory details.
- The deal directly addresses one of African fintech’s most persistent structural constraints: regulatory fragmentation across borders. Currently, a company licensed in Rwanda must start from scratch in every additional country, facing separate capital requirements, compliance checks, ongoing reporting and parallel supervisory relationships. For early-stage fintechs trying to scale regionally, the cost and timeline have been prohibitive.
- Rwanda signed a similar agreement with Ghana in February 2025. With Kenya now on board, Rwanda is systematically building the regulatory architecture of a gateway jurisdiction: one licence, multiple markets. Nigeria’s central bank has flagged interest in comparable frameworks.
- Africa’s fintech sector is projected to grow from $10 billion in revenue in 2023 to $47 billion by 2028, according to McKinsey. The passporting model directly addresses the scaling friction that has limited regional champions from emerging in payments, remittances and digital credit.
- Kenya brings Africa’s most mature mobile money ecosystem to the arrangement. M-Pesa, operated by Safaricom, processes billions in transactions annually and has 40 million customers. Rwanda’s Fintech regulatory sandbox is among the most agile on the continent, with licensing timelines of 3 to 4 months compared to 12 to 18 months in many peer markets.
- The initiative is rooted in the East African Community Cross-Border Payment System Masterplan, which calls for a mutual recognition framework across partner states. Uganda and Tanzania are watching closely, and broader EAC adoption would create a single regulatory base for fintechs serving the bloc’s 300 million people.
Deputy Governor Nyaoma noted global precedents: the EU’s financial passporting framework has enabled institutions licensed in one country to provide services across multiple markets without duplicating regulatory processes. Africa is now beginning to build its own version.
The Bigger Picture: Regulatory fragmentation is the single biggest structural barrier to fintech scale in Africa. A company can raise venture capital, build a great product and still spend two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars just getting licensed across three countries. The Kenya-Rwanda passporting agreement is a small but precise attack on that problem. If it works — if fintechs genuinely expand faster, if supervisors maintain risk control, if consumers benefit from more competition — the model becomes undeniable. Rwanda is positioning itself as the continent’s regulatory innovator. Kenya is lending the arrangement credibility it could not have without Africa’s most established digital financial market in the room.
Source: New Times Rwanda / Dawan Africa
