Scaling payment modernisation in East Africa: Stanchion Payments and TAI FINTECH Partnership

Modernising card and payment infrastructure is rarely held back by ambition. For most mid-sized banks, the constraint is more practical: how to introduce digital-first capabilities without the cost, delay, and risk of replacing systems that are still doing their job. That is the problem Stanchion Payments and TAI FINTECH are solving together across Kenya and the wider East African market.

TAI FINTECH, a joint venture between BCK Kenya Limited and the Strathmore Research and Consultancy Centre (SRCC), designs, integrates, and operates mission-critical technology platforms for financial institutions, enterprises, government agencies, and development organisations across the region. The partnership with Stanchion Payments, now roughly a year old, brings together international payments expertise with deep local delivery capability.

A Partnership Built on Complementary Strength

Stanchion Payments contribute s proven, globally deployed payments technology. Its Payment Fabric™ overlay platform, which has been deployed within more than 20 banks worldwide, is purpose-built to layer modern issuing capabilities. These include tokenisation, dynamic CVV, Click to Pay, and ePIN self-service, all of which is on top of a bank’s existing card management system, rather than replacing it.

TAI FINTECH brings what a global platform cannot supply on its own: engineering capacity on the ground, an academic research base through Strathmore University’s iLabAfrica, and an established footprint across financial services and the public sector in East Africa. Together, the two organisations can take a bank from initial technical conversation through to a working, locally supported deployment without asking that bank to put its core infrastructure at risk to get there.

Momentum across the region

In a relatively short period, the partnership has built an active pipeline of engagement with leading Kenyan banks exploring Payment Fabric™ enabled card modernisation, tokenisation-readiness, Click to Pay, dynamic CVV, and PIN-management solutions. Alongside this, the two organisations have delivered wearable and tap-to-pay tokenisation pilots in Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria, and are building a local delivery team through Strathmore’s iLabAfrica and Research Scholars programme to provide Level 1 and Level 2 support in-region.

What this demonstrates to the market is straightforward but important: mid-sized banks can modernise the card and payments experience their customers see: ePIN self-service, tokenisation, Click to Pay all in months rather than years, and without replacing the core systems they have already invested in.

Looking Ahead

Both organisations see the partnership extending well beyond card modernisation. Areas of future collaboration under discussion include payment orchestration, government digital payment platforms, financial inclusion initiatives, cross-border payment solutions, API ecosystem development, and cloud-native and AI-enabled financial infrastructure.

For Stanchion Payments, partnerships like this one are central to how the business grows in new markets, pairing proven technology with the local relationships, delivery capacity, and market understanding that banks look for before they commit to change. TAI FINTECH’s combination of commercial, academic, and engineering strength makes it a natural extension of that approach in East Africa.

As banks across the region weigh the pressure to modernise against the realities of legacy infrastructure and limited internal resources, partnerships that combine global expertise with local delivery – like Stanchion Payments and TAI FINTECH – offer a practical way to move forward with confidence.