Cellulant has integrated its Tingg payments platform with PesaLink’s interbank rail to enable instant customer-to-business payments from bank accounts to merchants across Kenya. The partnership connects merchants to PesaLink’s network of 80+ financial institutions, including 39 commercial banks, SACCOs, and fintechs. It removes the need to move funds between wallets and bank accounts before checkout and simplifies cash management.
What’s new
- Instant settlement and clean reconciliation: each transaction carries a unique reference ID that streamlines matching and reduces payment disputes.
- Higher ticket sizes: customers can pay up to KES 999,999 per transaction, positioning bank-to-merchant rails for higher-value ecommerce and B2B use cases.
- Direct-from-bank checkout: a one-step, bank-direct payment reduces cart abandonment and removes fragmentation across payment methods.
- Broader reach out of the box: merchants tap into PesaLink’s 80+ member institutions for nationwide coverage.
Why it matters
Merchants gain faster cash flow and lower operational friction, while finance teams get line-of-sight on every payment for easier ERP posting and automation. For banks, the move expands real-time use cases on existing PesaLink rails, growing volumes beyond account-to-account P2P into C2B at scale. Early pilots are live in airline and travel, with broader sector rollouts expected.
Impact at a glance
- Reduced settlement delays and lower chargeback risk due to unique IDs and instant posting.
- Larger average order values enabled by higher per-transaction limits.
- Better customer experience via a single, bank-direct payment step.
- Cleaner ERP integration and automated reconciliation.
Bottom line
Kenya’s real-time bank rails are moving from P2P into mainstream bank-to-merchant commerce. For enterprises and platforms handling higher-value transactions, the Cellulant and PesaLink integration offers speed, reliability, and cleaner reconciliation out of the box.
