From 15 July 2026, Airtel Money charges the same as M-PESA when the person receiving forwards the cash to another wallet. The small saving Airtel used to offer on smaller sends is gone. On the receive side there is one lever left, and it works only if the money is meant for a household bill.
What changed on 15 July
Airtel Money quietly matched Safaricom’s price ladder for sending money to an M-PESA number. No press release, no SMS to users, no note in the app. A KES 500 send that cost KES 6 before now costs KES 7. A KES 1,000 send is KES 13 instead of KES 11. Tech-ish tested the bands up to KES 2,500 and found Airtel now matches Safaricom there. On the M-PESA ladder the ceiling is KES 108, and the tech-ish read is that Airtel’s move to match applies to the top bands too. The rise is not a tax. The 16 percent VAT on wallet-to-wallet transfers was dropped from this year’s Finance Bill. Airtel simply chose to charge what M-PESA charges.
The one thing Airtel Money still does for free is Airtel-to-Airtel. That has never really helped a UK sender. Almost every household in Kenya uses M-PESA. An Airtel receiver who wanted to pass money to an M-PESA relative was already paying the higher fee to reach the other network. Now that fee is the same either way, so which wallet the money lands in makes no difference to what happens next.
What actually lands in Kenya
On 19 July 2026 the real exchange rate, the one you get if you search it on Google, was 1 GBP for 173.9 KES. Here is what a clean send with Wise lands as, before the person receiving spends any of it. Wise takes its cost on the UK side, so the SMS the receiver gets shows the full converted amount.
| You send | Rate on the day | Lands in the wallet |
|---|---|---|
| GBP 100 | 1 = 173.9 KES | about 17,390 KES |
| GBP 300 | 1 = 173.9 KES | about 52,170 KES |
| GBP 1,000 | 1 = 173.9 KES | about 173,900 KES |
These are the shape of the number, not a promise. The rate moves through the week; on Wise over the past month it has ranged from about 170.5 to 175.1. Run the actual quote in your app before you send.
The wallet fee bites when the money is moved on. If the person receiving forwards it to another mobile number, they lose a shilling amount from the ladder:
- KES 501 to KES 1,000: fee is KES 13.
- KES 1,501 to KES 2,500: fee is KES 33.
- KES 15,001 to KES 20,000: fee is KES 105.
- KES 20,001 and up: capped at KES 108.
So on a GBP 300 send that arrives as roughly KES 52,000, one forward to another wallet costs KES 108. On a GBP 1,000 send it is the same KES 108. That is the ceiling now, and the same on both wallets.
The lever that is still on the table
There is one clean way to skip the wallet fee: send straight to the bill. In Kenya, most household bills are paid through PayBill, which is Safaricom’s business payment system. The most common household-bill setup is called Customer Bouquet (you may also see it labelled Bila Malipo). Under that setup the business pays the fee, not the customer. That covers Kenya Power, the big banks, most private schools, and most hospitals and clinics. If the money is meant for one of those, the person receiving can PayBill it straight to the account and pay nothing on top.
Where this helps:
- Electricity, water, or gas bill for the household.
- School fees, hospital bill, insurance premium.
- Rent, if the landlord or the letting agent is registered with a PayBill number.
Where it does not help:
- Rent to a private landlord with no PayBill. That is still a wallet-to-wallet send, so the fee applies.
- General spending money. The person receiving needs the cash in the wallet, and the fee lands the next time they move it.
- A payout that goes to Airtel Money and then needs to reach an M-PESA number. That used to save a shilling or two on the small bands. It does not anymore.
Two things have to be true for this to work. The sender’s app must be able to pay a PayBill number directly, and not every app does. If it does not, the person receiving does the PayBill step themselves from the wallet, in one tap after the SMS arrives. Tell them the PayBill number and the account reference before you send. That is the whole trick.
Which app to open
For a straight send from a UK bank to an M-PESA number, Wise is the default. The rate matches Google, the fee shows on the screen, and the money arrives as an M-PESA SMS in minutes. Sendwave is worth checking on smaller sends where its zero-fee model can beat Wise on the total; the cost is inside the rate rather than on the fee line, so the number that lands is what to compare. WorldRemit and Remitly both pay into M-PESA and Airtel Money too, and Remitly’s economy option is often the cheapest if the money is not urgent.
Do not pick the app for which wallet it drops into. On the M-PESA leg, the wallet no longer changes the fee.
If your usual answer for Kenya is your UK bank’s international transfer, open one of the apps above instead. On 200 pounds, the bank usually keeps something like five to eight pounds of it in a worse rate and calls the transfer free. The exact margin varies by bank. The apps above show you the number the receiver gets before you tap send. That is the only number that matters.
Corrections
- 2026-07-19: An earlier version of this page named “Business Bouquet” as the PayBill tariff where the business pays the fee and the customer pays nothing. Safaricom calls that setup Customer Bouquet (also labelled Bila Malipo); Business Bouquet is the opposite. The reader outcome (a household PayBill like KPLC costs the customer nothing) is unchanged. The same update dropped Nairobi City Water from the customer-zero list (unverified), widened the Wise 30-day range to reflect today’s actual high, and softened the UK-bank margin and Airtel top-band claims to match what the sources had tested.