Earlier this week, the Bank of Kenya announced the successful migration of the Kenya Electronic Payment and Settlement System (KEPSS) to the ISO20022 Global Messaging Standard.
This move marks the modernisation of Kenya’s national payment systems, and will bring with it numerous benefits for the speed, security, efficiency, and convenience of payments for financial institutions in the country. The standardisation that ISO20022 brings with it will boost KEPSS into processing international transactions and improving liquidity management.
KEPSS is Kenya’s Real-Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS) that facilitates the nation’s regional and domestic payment transactions. From August 2023 to August 2024, KEPSS processed over 5.3 million local payments worth over Ksh. 45 trillion.
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) listed the adoption of ISO20022 has a part of their National Payments Strategy 2022-2025, and will also aim to migrate the Cheque Clearing House to ISO20022.