East Africa’s digital commerce boom is moving the trust problem beyond payment security
Digital commerce in East Africa is moving beyond the conventional online store. Consumers can discover a product on social media, discuss it with a seller on WhatsApp, receive a payment request and complete the transaction through mobile money or a card without ever visiting a traditional checkout page. That convenience is expanding the market, but it is also changing what it means for a customer to trust an online transaction.
In Kenya, mobile phones are already the dominant gateway to e-commerce, with 71.3% of respondents in the Communications Authority of Kenya’s 2024/25 Consumer Satisfaction Survey saying they use phones to access e-commerce platforms. Laptops accounted for 11.7%, tablets 9.6% and desktops 7.5%. The figures help explain why the architecture of digital commerce is moving toward mobile apps, messaging platforms, social networks and payment interfaces rather than remaining centred on conventional websites.
The question is no longer limited to whether a payment can travel securely from one account to another. Consumers also need confidence that the seller exists, the product is genuine, the identity behind the account is legitimate and the payment request belongs to the transaction they intended to make. For banks, fintechs, payment networks and merchants, that puts identity, fraud detection and transaction intelligence closer to the centre of digital commerce.
From digital payments to digital commerce
Kenya already has much of the infrastructure needed for digital commerce. Mobile money remains central to online transactions, while cards, bank transfers, QR payments and other digital payment services have widened the ways businesses can collect money from customers. Mobile money accounts for a large share of Kenya’s e-commerce payments, while cash on delivery and physical collection remain relevant partly because some consumers still want greater confidence in what they are buying before completing the transaction.
That combination matters because payment infrastructure does not exist separately from the rest of the shopping experience. A customer can find a product on Instagram, move into a WhatsApp conversation, receive a payment request through a mobile wallet and arrange delivery through the same phone. In many cases, there is no formal storefront tying those steps together.
TechTrends reporting has documented how WhatsApp has become a commercial operating layer for merchants across African markets, with product discovery, customer service, payment coordination and delivery arrangements often taking place inside the same conversation. Mastercard’s September partnership with Flowcart points in the same direction, bringing card payments into WhatsApp and other conversational commerce environments in Kenya. The companies said WhatsApp already accounts for more than 20% of online shopping orders in the country.
This makes trust harder to reduce to payment security alone. The payment rail can work exactly as designed and still leave a customer exposed to a fraudulent seller.
Kenya’s payment rails are multiplying
The payments market supporting this commerce is also becoming more diverse. Kenswitch has moved beyond its traditional role of routing transactions between financial institutions to operate a domestic card scheme, giving participating banks a local option for card issuance and transactions alongside international networks such as Visa and Mastercard.
The scale of Kenya’s card market gives the development context. Central Bank of Kenya data shows that the country had 13.76 million payment cards in July 2026, including 11.16 million debit cards, 2.26 million prepaid cards and about 341,000 credit cards. Payments through point-of-sale terminals reached KSh297 billion in 2025, while POS transactions excluding cash withdrawals were worth KSh176.9 billion during the first seven months of 2026.
At the same time, mobile money operates at a much larger numerical scale. CBK recorded 94.35 million registered mobile-money accounts and 575,400 active agents in July 2026, although the account figure includes multiple registrations by individual users and therefore does not represent unique consumers.
The contrast illustrates the nature of Kenya’s digital payments market. Cards, mobile money, bank transfers, QR payments, payment links, digital wallets and domestic as well as international payment networks are developing alongside one another. Consumers experience those systems as a single transaction even when several different institutions and technologies sit behind it.
That makes trust an ecosystem issue. A customer does not necessarily care which payment rail processes a purchase; they care whether the merchant is legitimate, whether their money is protected and whether there is a clear route to resolve a problem.
The checkout is moving into chats and apps
The growth of conversational and social commerce changes where trust is established.
A conventional e-commerce website gives consumers several familiar signals. There is a merchant name, a product catalogue, a checkout page, a customer service channel and often a visible returns policy. Commerce conducted through a messaging thread can compress those elements into a conversation between a buyer and a seller.
That model has advantages. It can be faster, more personal and cheaper for smaller merchants that cannot afford to build and maintain a full e-commerce operation. It also fits how many African consumers already communicate, transact and manage businesses through their phones.
But the same informality creates new questions. Who actually operates the account? Is the payment request connected to the seller? Does the product shown in the conversation exist? What happens when the transaction goes wrong?
Those questions become particularly important as more businesses use digital channels to reach customers. Mastercard’s 2026 SME Confidence Index found that 95% of Kenyan SMEs accept mobile payments, while 39% accept online payments. The gap illustrates that digital acceptance is broad, but the definition of online commerce is still evolving.
Kenya’s e-commerce market could grow from about KSh336.7 billion to roughly KSh496 billion by 2029, according to industry estimates. That growth will depend on the systems surrounding online trade, including payments, delivery, consumer protection, taxation and the ability of businesses to operate across digital channels.
Fraud is becoming an identity and merchant problem
Card-not-present transactions offer one example of how the problem has changed.
Mastercard says 70% of card-related fraud occurs on card-not-present transactions, where the physical card is not presented to a merchant. In these transactions, the payment system has to assess more than the credentials themselves, using information about the device, merchant, customer behaviour and transaction context to determine whether activity appears legitimate.
That logic is becoming relevant beyond card payments.
TransUnion reported that 2.3% of transaction attempts involving Kenyan consumers in 2025 were suspected digital fraud. Among Kenyan consumers who reported losing money to digital fraud, 39% attributed those losses to third-party seller scams on legitimate websites.
The distinction is important. A fraudulent payment does not always begin with a fake banking page or an obviously suspicious transaction. It can begin with a genuine consumer, a genuine payment system and a seller who should not be trusted.
TechTrends reporting on digital trust in Kenya has highlighted the same problem from the consumer side. One study cited by the publication found that 91% of Kenyan consumers ranked confidence that their personal data would not be compromised as a leading consideration when transacting online, while 80% said they would not return to a platform where fraud had occurred.
Trust therefore extends beyond authentication. It involves knowing who is on the other side of the transaction and having meaningful recourse when something goes wrong.
Security has to work without slowing legitimate payments
There is another side to the problem. Consumers want stronger protection, but they also expect payments to happen with very little effort.
Mobile-first users have become accustomed to instant confirmation, biometric authentication, saved payment details and one-click transactions. A checkout that repeatedly asks for passwords, verification codes or manual card information can introduce enough friction to make a customer abandon the purchase.
That creates a difficult design requirement for the payments industry. Security has to operate in the background wherever possible, while stronger intervention is triggered when a transaction actually presents elevated risk.
Tokenization is one part of that architecture. Instead of repeatedly exposing a card number, tokenized transactions can use a substitute credential tied to a particular device, merchant or payment environment. Mastercard says more than four billion Mastercard transactions are tokenized globally each month and has set a target of tokenizing all online transactions by 2030.
Visa reported that tokenized credentials had a 39.4% lower fraud rate than non-tokenized credentials across its global network during its 2025 financial year. That figure is a global network measurement and should not be treated as a Kenya-specific fraud rate, but it illustrates why tokenization has become an important part of payment-security strategies.
Tokenization can reduce the exposure of payment credentials, but it does not by itself establish that the merchant is legitimate. A securely tokenized payment can still be made to the wrong seller if the surrounding commerce ecosystem fails to establish who is actually receiving the money.
That is why the evolution of digital credentials matters beyond plastic cards. Kenswitch is developing support for contactless payments through smartphones and digital wallets, while Mastercard has expanded tokenized payment credentials across phones, cards and other devices. The payment credential is becoming something that can sit inside the device or service a consumer already uses rather than something that has to be physically carried.
Payment networks are also investing in contextual fraud intelligence. Mastercard Decision Intelligence uses transaction and network data to assess payment risk, while Visa has expanded its A2A Protect service using Featurespace technology to provide a unified fraud score for account-to-account transactions.
The broader direction is clear: faster payments require faster decisions about risk. Kenya’s financial system is also moving toward more connected payment infrastructure, with interoperability and ISO 20022 messaging forming part of the wider effort to improve how payment information moves between institutions.
AI is making trust harder to establish
Artificial intelligence adds another layer to the problem because it can improve both legitimate commerce and fraudulent activity.
Consumers can already use AI to compare products, find brands and make purchasing decisions. Visa’s 2026 Kenya study found that 89% of consumers had used AI during their shopping journeys, while 91% said AI made online shopping faster or more convenient. Yet only 29% said they trusted AI agents to complete checkout on their behalf.
That gap captures an important part of the trust problem. Consumers may be comfortable using AI to help them shop while remaining reluctant to let software make the final financial decision.
Fraudsters have access to the same technologies. AI can help produce convincing messages, websites, identities and social-engineering campaigns that resemble legitimate interactions. TechTrends reporting has already documented how fraud is moving across mobile money, digital lending, online services and other digital channels, with identity becoming an important point of attack.
For payment providers and merchants, this raises the value of systems that can evaluate the broader context of a transaction rather than relying on a single authentication event. The challenge is to distinguish legitimate automation from manipulation without turning every digital transaction into a lengthy verification exercise.
Trust has to extend across the payment ecosystem
The regional nature of East Africa’s payment infrastructure adds another layer.
Mastercard’s collaboration with KCB spans Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, covering areas such as e-commerce payments, cross-border remittances, QR payments and Tap on Phone. Its work with Safaricom is also aimed at expanding payment acceptance and cross-border remittance services to more than 636,000 M-PESA merchants.
Other partnerships are following similar paths. Mastercard and NMB Bank in Tanzania have introduced QR Pay by Link, while Mastercard and MTN MoMo have worked with partners in Uganda on a virtual card for online transactions.
The significance of these initiatives goes beyond the individual products. East African commerce is being assembled from multiple payment rails and technology providers, meaning trust has to survive as a transaction moves between merchants, banks, mobile-money platforms, payment processors, messaging services and delivery networks.
That also makes consumer protection part of the infrastructure. A secure payment is of limited value if the customer cannot establish who sold the product, recover money after a fraudulent transaction or obtain meaningful assistance when a digital transaction goes wrong.
Recourse matters too. Recent Kenyan disputes around mistaken electronic transfers have highlighted questions about the responsibilities of financial institutions after customers report erroneous payments. While such cases are not necessarily e-commerce fraud disputes, they illustrate a broader principle: confidence in digital payments depends partly on what happens after a transaction goes wrong.
The challenge is making trust almost invisible
East Africa does not have to invent digital commerce from scratch. It already has widespread mobile-money adoption, growing e-commerce, established payment networks and a large population comfortable using phones for financial transactions.
The challenge is whether the trust infrastructure can keep pace with the way commerce is being delivered.
The traditional online store offered a relatively contained transaction. The emerging model can involve a social post, a WhatsApp conversation, an automated recommendation, a payment link, a mobile wallet and a delivery service, all connected through different companies and systems.
For consumers, the ideal experience is simple. They should be able to discover something, pay for it and receive it without unnecessary friction. Behind that simplicity, however, payment providers and merchants need to establish whether the customer is genuine, whether the seller is legitimate, whether the transaction fits expected behaviour and whether the payment can be recovered or disputed when something goes wrong.
That is where the next layer of East Africa’s digital commerce infrastructure will be built. The payment itself is only one part of the transaction, and the proliferation of payment rails does not make that problem smaller. It makes consistent standards for identity, fraud detection, authentication, privacy and recourse more important.
As more commerce moves into phones, chats, wallets and AI-assisted interfaces, the strongest payment experience may be the one the customer barely notices while the systems behind it are doing considerably more work.
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