Kenya’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are entering the year ahead with renewed optimism in mobile money and digital payments. A new Mastercard SME Confidence Index reveals that 66 percent of SMEs are confident about their business outlook, while 70 percent expect revenue growth over the next 12 months.
The survey credits Kenya’s deep digital fluency for this resilience. Mobile payments are now accepted by 95 percent of SMEs, accounting for 41 percent of transaction volumes. This places mobile money ahead of card payments at 29 percent and online transactions at 39 percent, underscoring Kenya’s unique position as a continental leader in digital commerce.
“Kenyan SMEs are some of the most digitally fluent on the continent, and their optimism reflects a wider story unfolding across Africa,” said Gabriel Swanepoel, division president for Africa at Mastercard. He noted that as businesses look to scale, Mastercard’s role is to help convert momentum into lasting growth through payment solutions, insights, and access to finance.
Despite optimism, challenges remain. 77 percent of respondents flagged rising costs as the most significant pressure on operations in the past year. Yet technology and digitalisation emerged as a counterweight, cited by 62 percent of SMEs as a key positive driver feeding directly into growth projections.
Shehryar Ali, senior vice president and country manager for East Africa at Mastercard, said the findings reflect the maturity of Kenya’s payment ecosystem. “SMEs are the engine of Kenya’s economy, and their confidence in the year ahead speaks volumes about their resilience and ambition,” he said.
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With payment acceptance largely solved, SMEs are now seeking their next competitive edge. 80 percent of respondents identified simple, seamless, and user‑friendly payment methods as a priority, while 70 percent pointed to access to better data and analytics as critical for sharpening customer insights and omnichannel strategies.
Access to capital also remains a defining theme. Nearly 44 percent of SMEs sought external funding in the past year, with 46 percent of them pursuing credit for expansion compared to 13 percent seeking funds to sustain operations.
Mastercard highlighted several initiatives supporting SMEs, including a collaboration with Safaricom to strengthen payment acceptance across the M‑PESA ecosystem, which now supports more than 636,000 merchants. The company is also expanding Tap to Pay for smartphones, introducing tokenisation‑based wearables for secure transactions, and deepening partnerships with KCB Bank, I&M Bank, NMB Bank, and Diamond Trust Bank to scale digital payments and financial services.
These efforts have contributed to a 45 percent increase in Mastercard’s acceptance network across Africa, widening the pool of SMEs able to participate in the digital economy and reinforcing Kenya’s role as a hub of innovation and enterprise resilience.
By Masaki Enock
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