Payment Gateway Kenya

Kenyan shoppers often pay from their phones. For a business selling into Kenya, the main question is how to put M-Pesa in front of the customer at checkout and reliably learn whether the payment went through.

Payment Gateway Africa handles that path. We are a payment gateway in Africa that covers pay-ins and processing across seven markets, with payouts where available for the method and project, and Kenya is one of them. In Kenya, the method we support is M-Pesa, and transactions are priced in KES.

This page covers how an M-Pesa payment moves through Payment Gateway Africa, which operations you can run, and how to integrate. It also explains what onboarding involves before your first live Kenyan transaction.

If you are comparing payment gateways in Kenya, use this page to check the operational fit. Confirm that the method, currency and integration model match your checkout before you look at commercial terms.

Currency: Kenyan shilling (KES). Payment Gateway Africa processes Kenyan transactions in the local currency.

Local method on Payment Gateway Africa: M-Pesa. This is the full list of methods currently supported for Kenya.

Typical payment confirmation: the customer receives a payment prompt on their phone (STK push) and approves it by entering their M-Pesa PIN on their own device.

Central bank: the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) oversees the national payment system.

Data protection: Kenya has a Data Protection Act from 2019. Whether and how it applies to your business depends on your role as a data controller or processor, and you should check that with your legal advisers.

Market background describes how the local ecosystem works. It does not confirm that any particular merchant is connected. What you can use through Payment Gateway Africa is set by our supported method list and by your project configuration.

Step 1. Checkout. Your customer chooses M-Pesa on your site or app and gives the phone number linked to their wallet. Depending on your integration, they do this on the Payment Gateway Africa hosted page or in a form you control.

Step 2. Payment request. Your backend sends the payment details for your project to Payment Gateway Africa, such as the amount in KES and your order reference. With the hosted page, the customer then completes the remaining details on the Payment Gateway Africa page.

Step 3. Prompt on the phone. A payment request appears on the customer's handset.

Step 4. PIN approval. The customer checks the amount and confirms with their M-Pesa PIN on their own device. If they do not approve, the payment does not complete.

Step 5. Status to you. Payment Gateway Africa sends the outcome to your systems through a postback or webhook. Your order can then move to paid, failed or pending without anyone checking by hand. These notifications go to you as the merchant. Payment Gateway Africa does not run a separate notification service for your customers, so you send your own receipts.

Step 6. Settlement. Successful pay-ins are included in your merchant settlement, which is sent on the same day (T+0). Settlement is the transfer to you, so it runs as a separate flow from the customer's payment.

There is no native in-app SDK. In a mobile app, the checkout runs through a payment page in the browser.

Pay-ins: collect M-Pesa payments in KES for orders, top-ups, subscriptions you bill yourself, or marketplace transactions. Every pay-in has a status that your backend can track.

Payouts: send funds out to recipients, such as sellers, partners or customers receiving refunds, where available for the method and project. Payout availability is confirmed for your setup during onboarding. Do not assume it applies by default.

Merchant settlement: Payment Gateway Africa dispatches your settlement on a same-day (T+0) basis. This refers to when the transfer leaves us, not when it posts to your account, since bank posting times vary.

Reporting: use transaction records and statuses to reconcile orders against settlements. Because pay-ins, payouts and settlements are tracked as three separate flows, your finance team can match each one on its own.

Adding methods later: if you already work with Payment Gateway Africa in another market, you can add supported payment methods at no extra connection fee. Enabling more methods does not change your connection price. For existing merchants, a method we already support can often be activated within one day.

To see how M-Pesa compares with the wallets we support elsewhere, read our overview of M-Pesa and other mobile money payments.

There are two ways to connect. Both use the same gateway. They differ in how much of the checkout your team builds.

Hosted Payment Page: you redirect the customer to an Payment Gateway Africa-hosted page. The customer enters the M-Pesa details there and approves the payment on their phone. This is the faster route if you want to launch in Kenya without building your own payment form.

Direct API (host-to-host): your backend calls Payment Gateway Africa directly and you control the entire checkout interface. This suits platforms with their own design system, several merchants, or complex order logic. A direct API connection is an integration method. It is not a white-label product.

With either option, payment results arrive through postbacks or webhooks. Design your order logic so the webhook, not the customer's browser returning to your site, is the source of truth for payment status.

The integration guide for hosted page and API compares the two in technical detail. Full API reference and credentials are provided after merchant onboarding.

Before live processing begins, every merchant goes through know-your-business (KYB) review. Expect to provide company details, information about ownership and control, a description of what you sell, and the markets you plan to serve.

Kenyan requirements can affect how you collect and store customer data and how you describe your products and refund terms at checkout. They can also affect your own obligations as a business selling to Kenyan consumers. You remain responsible for your own regulatory position, so take local legal advice where needed.

Our AML and KYC requirements set out what we review, why we review it, and how the onboarding sequence works from application to go-live.

Payment Gateway Africa supports payments in seven African markets. Once your Kenyan integration is live, you can request additional supported markets for your project, subject to method availability and setup.

Also available in Ethiopia, with CBE Birr and M-Pesa, a natural next step for East African operations. Ethiopia uses its own currency (ETB) and its own range of supported methods.

Also available in Egypt, through phone-number wallet payments, for businesses that cover both East and North Africa.

To see every market, currency and method in one view, browse all supported countries.

Going live in Kenya takes four steps. First, submit your application. Second, complete KYB review. Third, test your integration in a separate test project, where our support team can set the callback statuses you need. Fourth, switch to production keys once your webhook handling and reconciliation work as expected.

Pricing is quoted for your business and depends on your markets, methods, expected volumes and the operations you need. See how Payment Gateway Africa pricing works for the factors that shape a quote.

When you are ready, start your Payment Gateway Africa application and tell us about your Kenyan rollout. Our team will confirm which operations are available for your project.