👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Zenith Bank is now in Kenya

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Nigeria’s tier-1 bank, Zenith Bank, has completed the full acquisition of Paramount Bank, a Kenyan lender, and will now be operational within the country. Previously, in January 2026, Zenith secured approval from the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK), the country’s competition and fair market regulator, for the deal. 

Its entry into Kenya comes at an unprecedented time when lenders, big and small(er), are finding their way to the East African country. Access Bank, a Nigerian tier-1 bank, acquired the National Bank of Kenya (NBK) in 2025 to deepen its existing presence in the country. Nigerian microfinance bank and fintech unicorn, Moniepoint, acquired Kenya’s Sumac Microfinance Bank in March. Several other banks are circling, including South Africa’s FirstRand, whose CEO Mary Vilakazi said “We’d like to go to Kenya” in 2025, and Nedbank, which is in theprocess of acquiring a 66% stakein Kenya’s NCBA. 

The Paramount acquisition gives Zenith 0.2% of the market: Paramount was ranked the 33rd out of 39 licenced banks in Kenya in terms of scale. It operated with a limited, specialised network, notably holding only eight branches at the time of its acquisition. According to the Kenyan lender, it served 150,000 clients, a mere footnote in Zenith’s own 60 million customers. In its last report before the acquisition, Paramount held KES 12.8 billion ($98.9 million) in customer deposits, far outclassed by the KES 1.48 trillion ($11.4 billion) recorded by KCB, Kenya’s largest bank by assets. 

Between the lines: The numbers show the level of turnaround Zenith has to pull off at Paramount if it wants the Kenyan acquisition to justify the capital, regulatory risk, and management attention it’s throwing at the deal. Zenith reportedly paid over $7.7 million to acquire the bank and is expected to retain about 78 employees.

The rest of the Kenyan banking industry is dominated by local players, including Equity Group, KCB Bank, NCBA, and foreign players who acquired their way into the country, such as Nigeria’s Access Bank (NBK), GTCO (Fina Bank), and United Bank for Africa (UBA), the odd one out that had a greenfield launch in 2009. 

Now, add fintechs to the mix: Banks, big and small, will rival each other to grow their share of the Kenyan banking‑aware population. Yet, telecom players (read: Safaricom and Airtel Kenya) will be staking their own claim to be the default rails for everyday payments. With Kenyans nowusing mobile money services more than ever before, operators will be looking to keep them longer, luring them with credit, savings, and insurance, and steadily chipping away at banks’ relevance. Traditional fintechs, too, are not out of the mix; PalmPay also operates in the country, making payments a race to the top.

Kenya’s tax authority is switching leadership at a delicate moment. The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has declined to renew the contract of its Commissioner General, Humphrey Wattanga, sending him on immediate terminal leave after just over two years in office. 

Wattanga, a Harvard-trained tax expert appointed in 2023, had been tasked with fixing underperforming revenue collection and pushing internal reforms. His tenure coincided with growing pressure on the agency to meet ambitious government targets amid rising debt and a tough economic environment.

Between the lines: The KRA board, chaired by Ndiritu Muriithi, did not give a reason for the decision but named Lilian Nyawanda, head of customs and border control, as acting Commissioner General pending a competitive recruitment process. Nyawanda inherits an agency under scrutiny from both the private sector, over aggressive enforcement, and the government, which is relying heavily on tax revenues to fund its budget.

Wattanga is not leaving public service entirely. Hours after his exit, President William Ruto nominated him as Kenya’s High Commissioner to South Africa, part of a routine cycle of diplomatic appointments across Kenya’s foreign missions that will require parliamentary approval.

Zoom out: Wattanga’s exit signals a potential recalibration of Kenya’s tax strategy under William Ruto’s administration. Whether Nyawanda maintains the current enforcement-heavy approach or softens it to ease pressure on businesses will determine how investors and operators assess Kenya’s operating environment in the months ahead.

Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO), a Nigerian tier‑1 banking group that owns Guaranty Trust Bank, is leaning harder on its payments arm for growth. HabariPay, the subsidiary behind Squad, recorded ₦9.74 billion ($7 million) in profit in 2025, up from ₦3.83 billion ($2.8 million) the previous year, as merchants and consumers pushed more transfers and card payments through its rails. 

HabariPay is GTCO’s most profitable non‑bank business and one of the most profitable stand‑alone bank‑owned fintechs in Nigeria.

We should pay more attention to Nigerian bank-owned fintechs. Access Holdings, the non‑operating parent of tier-1 lender Access Bank, is further back on absolute profit, but closing in on growth. 

In the nine months to September 2025, Access Bank’s payment segment—Hydrogen—generated ₦6.2 billion ($4.5 million) in revenue and ₦1.2 billion ($871,000) in profit before tax (PBT), slightly below the ₦6.8 billion ($4.9 million) revenue and ₦1.5 billion ($1.1 million) PBT it posted in the same period of 2024. The bank’s digital lending (Oxygen X) and pensions segments also help diversify Access’s earnings beyond interest on loans.

Zoom out: HabariPay and Access-owned Hydrogen are proof that bank‑backed fintechs can throw off billions in profit and evidently compete with traditional fintechs. Keeping that performance steady—and even scaling it—while holding margins in check could blunt the “speed” argument of traditional fintechs, particularly if customers keep flocking in at a similar pace.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, Nigeria’s Value Added Tax (VAT) collections and Company Income Tax (CIT) collections dropped quarter-on-quarter, according to the country’s Bureau of Statistics.

People are still spending: VAT, which tracks and collects from everyday spending, reduced by 3.78% to ₦2.19 trillion ($1.5 billion) from the ₦2.28 trillion ($1.65 billion) in the previous quarter. Although it declined, it shows that people are still making purchases and transactions, just a bit more cautiously.

Companies are struggling: CIT fell sharply by 49.81% to ₦1.49 trillion ($1.08 billion) in Q4 from ₦2.96 trillion ($2.1 billion) in Q3 2025. CIT usually tracks corporate profitability and taxable earnings, and such a sharp decline suggests that companies are under a different kind of pressure, ranging from lower earnings to delayed remittances.

Why this matters: This split was happening just before Nigeria fully settled into its new tax regime that took effect in 2026. So these numbers feel like a checkpoint about what things looked like before the rules tightened and compliance expanded. If reforms work, we might see stronger collections driven by a wider tax base and fewer quarterly drops.

Written by: Emmanuel Nwosu and Opeyemi Kareem

Edited by: Emmanuel Nwosu and Ganiu Oloruntade