You may not recognise the similarities at first, but the early years of the seven-year California Gold Rush which ended in 1855, are analogous to the scramble for Kenya’s new fast payment system (FPS) contract with striking parallels.
Back then, hopeful miners flooded California, dreaming of striking it rich overnight. Now, it’s fintechs, banks, and tech firms rushing to stake their claim in Kenya’s digital payments sector. Just like the gold rush, the FPS frenzy has its fair share of prospectors, speculators, and big-money players looking to control the financial veins of Kenya’s economy.
Staking its claim for Kenya’s un-interoperable digital payments sector is the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Scheme (NIBSS), which became Nigeria’s payment switch in 2006. Ceva, a Kenyan payments software provider, has named NIBSS its “strategic partner” in its bid for the contract. With NIBSS’ reputation as a payments switch that supports multiple digital payment forms in Nigeria, there’s reason to believe it’s also eyeing the role of technology provider for Kenya.
Does NIBSS have the bandwidth to be a payment infrastructure provider for another country? While we cannot answer that, let’s consider the pros and the cons.
The central switch launched the NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP) technology in 2011, a key driver of the speed Nigeria’s banking industry now boasts. Despite this, downtimes still plague fintechs, businesses, and Nigerians relying on NIBSS for stability. Its worst outage in the last five years came in 2023, totaling 218.6 hours, per data aggregated from payment processors Flutterwave and Paystack.
NIBSS improved in 2024, shifting to a hybrid data backup system to counter frequent cable cuts that disrupted service availability. With ongoing upgrades, it could pitch stability as a key selling point to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).
Yet, NIBSS and Ceva will still have to battle Safaricom and the Kenya Bankers Association (KBA), which have strongly opposed building a new FPS. But in the end, bidders can only cast their die; the decision stays firmly in the CBK’s hand—to either take Ceva and NIBSS up on their offer or decide it is better off counting the syllables in the word “interoperability” instead.
