Fintech in Nairobi: mobile payment volumes and the licensing queue
The regulator's licensing regime is what decides which business models survive the next year.
Mobile money has stopped being a payments story and become an infrastructure one. Merchant acceptance, savings products and short-term credit now sit on rails that were built to move small amounts of value between phones.
The regulator holds the pace. A licensing regime that separates payment service providers from deposit-takers decides which firms can hold balances overnight, and that single line determines which business models are viable.
Consolidation follows from the same rule. Firms that cannot hold balances need a partner bank, and the cost of that partnership tends to push smaller providers into acquisition or into a narrow niche.
The open question is what happens to interoperability once the queue clears. Cross-network transfers work, but pricing between networks still shapes where a small merchant chooses to be paid.