Kenya’s Cashless Tourism Still Trailing Larger Digital Payment Success
Photo Credit: Kenya has had much success with digital payments overall, not yet in its tourism businesses. M-PESA / M-PESA
Skift Take
Kenya is a prime example of how far cashless economies need to go, especially for tourism. The country's successes will need to be measured against the challenges.
The Covid-19 pandemic reinforced the value of digital payments in keeping economies running, particularly the tourism sector. Since the beginning of the crisis, many governments strongly discouraged the use of cash, favoring digital transactions instead.
Apart from minimizing the risk of contact during the pandemic, the system can enhance a destination’s tourism experience as well as offer competitive advantages when it comes to marketing the destinations, they argued.
But Kenya illustrates some of the challenges. Even while the country is ahead of the pack when it comes to digital payments in Africa, the acceptance of this mode of payment in the tourism sector is still low. Only 15 percent of Kenyans use digital payments as a means of transaction, according to Visa Kenya.
Even the use of M-PESA, which is one of the popular digital modes of transactions, is also low, accounting for just 13 percent of transactions while the other modes of cashless tr
