Pesalink and Cellulant, a prominent African payments technology company, have partnered to streamline and expedite digital payments throughout Kenya. Through the partnership, Pesalink’s vast network—which links over 80 financial institutions, including 39 commercial banks, SACCOs, and fintechs—will be integrated with Cellulant’s powerful payment platform, Tingg.
This partnership allows millions of customers to pay merchants directly from their bank accounts, eliminating the need to transfer money between bank accounts, mobile wallets, and other platforms before completing transactions. The service intends to make payments easy, quick, and dependable for consumers and companies.
Main advantages of the PesaLink- Cellulant partnership
One of the main advantages of the integration is that transactions settle instantly, relieving businesses of the concern of misplaced or delayed transfers.
Additionally, every payment will be uniquely identified, simplifying tracking and reconciliation. The collaboration enables clients to pay in one step straight from their bank by eliminating the fragmentation brought about by various payment platforms.
The partnership between Cellulant and Pesalink is anticipated to strengthen Kenya’s digital economy by improving the effectiveness and transparency of financial transactions. While consumers now enjoy a new degree of convenience and confidence in digital payments, merchants are relieved of frequent payment delays and reconciliation problems.
Goal of PesaLink-Cellulant’s partnership to simplify digital payments
This action aims to address long-standing inefficiencies in the nation’s payment ecosystem, specifically those related to delays, fragmented payment channels, and reconciliation.
Kenyan businesses and consumers have long had to figure out intricate workarounds to finish transactions, frequently moving money from bank accounts to mobile wallets before making payments to retailers.
The partnership removes these additional steps, removing delays and guaranteeing immediate settlement by permitting direct account-to-merchant transfers. By assigning distinct transaction identifiers, the partnership seeks to decrease reconciliation errors and provide merchants with more dependable and transparent payment flows.
Implication of Cellulant-PesaLink’s integration
PesaLink Chief Growth Officer Plounne Oyunge emphasised the partnership’s wider economic ramifications for Kenya.
Noting that integrating with Cellulant’s platform solves tracking and reconciliation pain points while providing merchants with seamless payment options, he clarified that PesaLink was developed to streamline payments and enhance trust in digital commerce.
Cellulant’s Vice President of Group Innovation and Software Engineering, Michael Muriuki, stressed that the company’s goal is to make payments less complicated.
According to him, changing the way money moves can boost consumer access, quicken company expansion, and ultimately fortify communities by fostering innovation and fostering trust.
The next frontier is business-to-business transactions, even though mobile money has dominated Kenya’s consumer market with over 91 percent penetration and a near-monopoly held by Safaricom’s M-Pesa.
Bulk disbursements and reconciliation are ongoing issues for large businesses, suppliers, and payroll systems; these are areas where traditional mobile money platforms have had difficulty scaling successfully.
Combination of PesaLink’s interbank transfer system with Cellulant’s merchant-focused infrastructure
Combining PesaLink’s high-value interbank transfer system with Cellulant’s merchant-focused infrastructure puts the partnership in a position to unlock solutions for complex B2B payments, a crucial growth area in Kenya’s developing digital economy.
Cellulant has dedicated nearly two decades to creating a pan-African payments network that uses a single integration to link financial institutions, consumers, and businesses.
Its Tingg platform facilitates cross-border trade and bridges fragmented markets by allowing both large corporations and MSMEs to accept payments through a variety of channels.
As the official interbank payment rail for Kenya’s financial industry, PesaLink, on the other hand, offers institutional authority and scale. It provides safe, valuable transfers that are not possible with mobile money, with a transaction cap of KES 999,999 and daily processing of over KES 4 billion.
One of PesaLink’s most important advantages is its use of ISO 20022, a global messaging standard that enhances transaction data and makes sophisticated services like automated reconciliation and Request-to-Pay possible. By enhancing Cellulant’s merchant reach and payment orchestration, this technical capability paves the way for more creative use cases in Kenya’s financial services industry.
The two businesses are laying the groundwork for improved digital payments in terms of efficiency, transparency, and scalability.
The collaboration between Cellulant and PesaLink represents a turning point in the development of Kenya’s financial system. In addition to improving customer experiences by tackling systemic inefficiencies in payments, the partnership gives businesses access to high-value, safe, and seamless transaction solutions.
This strategic convergence marks the next phase in digital finance as Kenya’s mobile money market develops and has the potential to change how consumers and businesses in the area deal with money.