Capital Pay International Limited CEO Garang Malek with Viatrans global head of trade facilitation Morgan Lepinoy during a partnership signing in Nairobi.
Kenya’s clearing and forwarding industry is becoming an increasingly important market for financial technology companies, as more than 1,200 licensed agents manage professional payments, cargo records, and compliance requirements across one of East Africa’s busiest trade networks.
For decades, clearing agents have worked between customs authorities, ports, shipping lines, transport companies, banks, and cargo owners, creating a complicated operating environment where one shipment can generate several payments and records before goods finally leave the port.
CapitalPay International’s partnership with the Kenya International Freight and Warehousing Association places the payments company inside that environment through a proposed Centralised Clearing and Forwarding Management System intended to connect professional records, payments, compliance, and cargo information.
The project also points to a wider change inside Kenya’s fintech sector, where companies that once concentrated mainly on consumer payments are increasingly looking at business-to-business infrastructure and the financial processes sitting behind logistics, trade and professional services.
Clearing agents sit inside a complicated payment chain
A clearing agent working on one shipment may interact with a cargo owner, bank, customs system, port operator, shipping line and transporter before the goods begin moving towards their final destination.
Each organisation may hold a different part of the transaction record, meaning delays can still occur even after the customer has already made the required payment.
An incorrect reference or unmatched transaction can leave finance teams trying to determine which customer paid, what the money was intended to settle and which institution needs to complete the next step.
For freight businesses operating on tight timelines, that administrative friction can translate directly into storage costs, delayed deliveries and additional pressure on working capital.
This is the problem that payment infrastructure companies increasingly want to solve, moving beyond simply collecting money and into reconciliation, professional records, settlement and transaction visibility.
KIFWA’s digital plan puts payments at the centre.
The KIFWA and CapitalPay programme proposes bringing several parts of the clearing-agent workflow into one management system, including professional records, payments, compliance, cargo visibility and dispute handling.
The plan is significant because KIFWA’s membership operates inside a sector connecting the Port of Mombasa with domestic businesses and regional markets relying on Kenya’s Northern Corridor.
A platform serving more than 1,200 agents could generate a large volume of professional and commercial transactions, making reliable payment matching and record-keeping important to both individual agents and the institutions interacting with them.
For CapitalPay, the project provides a large-scale test of whether institutional payment technology can remove some of the manual work surrounding transactions in an industry where several organisations need to recognise the same payment.
The programme has been presented as a phased project, meaning the most important evidence will come from pilots and later deployment rather than the size of the agreement announced at signing.
Working capital is becoming part of the technology conversation
The clearing industry’s financial problems extend beyond matching professional payments because traders and agents can also lose access to working capital through deposits and other requirements attached to cargo movements.
CapitalPay has separately worked with Viaservice Kenya on a model addressing container deposits for freight moving through Mombasa towards South Sudan, where traders can face much higher deposit requirements than cargo destined for some neighbouring markets.
Shipping lines traditionally use container deposits to protect themselves against loss, damage or delayed return, but the money remains unavailable to the trader until the container obligation is closed.
For businesses moving several containers, those deposits can remove significant cash from normal operations at the exact moment the trader is already financing transport, duties, stock and other costs.
Digital guarantees and better container tracking offer one possible way of reducing that pressure by replacing part of the cash requirement with a documented financial undertaking linked to the movement and return of the equipment.
Mombasa gives Kenya a regional fintech opportunity.
The Port of Mombasa serves cargo moving into Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other regional markets, placing Kenya at the centre of several important East African trade corridors.
That role means technology improving payments or logistics through Mombasa can influence the competitiveness of Kenyan transporters, freight forwarders and other businesses serving regional cargo.
The opportunity is particularly important as African economies try to expand intra-continental trade, since transport costs and administrative delays can weaken the commercial value of tariff reductions and other trade agreements.
Kenyan fintech companies and payment infrastructure providers are increasingly moving into this space, where the commercial opportunity involves helping businesses manage high-volume payments, reconciliation and settlement rather than competing only for consumer transactions.
Reconciliation could become the next fintech battleground.
Kenya has already demonstrated that digital payments can become part of everyday economic life, but large businesses face a different challenge from consumers sending money between mobile phones.
A company processing thousands of transactions needs to know which invoice every payment belongs to, which transaction failed, where money settled and which member of staff approved an exception.
That makes reconciliation one of the quieter areas where fintech companies can create significant value for businesses.
CapitalPay’s model places reconciliation and settlement records beside payment collection, giving clearing agents and participating institutions a potential way to follow a transaction from invoice creation through final settlement.
The concept is particularly relevant in logistics because the payment often unlocks another operating action rather than ending the process.
The real test comes after implementation.
Technology projects around trade and logistics can attract large expectations during signing ceremonies, but users usually judge them through much simpler measures after deployment.
Clearing agents will want to know whether payments arrive correctly, whether professional records become easier to manage and whether transaction disputes are resolved more quickly.
Cargo owners will care about whether the systems reduce unnecessary delays and give them clearer information about what they owe and what has already been paid.
Banks and other participating institutions will look at transaction accuracy, settlement information and whether every payment can be reconstructed through a reliable audit record.
For KIFWA and CapitalPay, those everyday measures will determine whether the proposed platform becomes an important part of Kenya’s freight infrastructure.
For Kenya’s wider fintech industry, the project points towards a much larger opportunity emerging behind the country’s familiar consumer-payment success story: building the financial infrastructure that keeps trade moving after a customer has already pressed the pay button.
