Case Study · Banks
A handshake. A rail. One Kenya.
How a pilot bank joined the KCB-anchored Lipafo switch — without losing a single customer to a third-party wallet.
Gikomba · Day 1
The decision
"Our customers stay ours. Our merchants get more."
The pilot bank's worry was simple — they did not want a third-party wallet sitting between them and their customer ever again. Lipafo's design respects that: the bank app is the surface, the bank's AML and fraud screening stays in place, and the bank's treasury runs its own RTGS settlement based on Lipafo's end-of-day position advice.
"We did not give up our customer. We gave them more places to spend with us."
REST/JSON
Daraja-pattern API the team already knew
Same Paybills
Existing merchant numbers, exposed via the Bank Merchant API
Bank-led
AML, KYC, fraud screening stay at the bank
The integration shape
- Bank Merchant API — the bank exposes its registered Paybills and Tills to the Lipafo Merchant Portal. No new identifiers issued.
- Switch Core — Lipafo routes intents to the right bank connector, guarantees idempotency, journals every event.
- EOD position advice — at 00:00 EAT, Lipafo emails each bank its bilateral net positions. Banks initiate their own RTGS by 12:00 EAT T+1.
- KCB anchor — KCB hosts the interbank suspense GL and serves as anchor settlement bank during the pilot.