Kenyan Lender Credit Bank to Raise $6.89 Million Through IPO

Kenyan lender Credit Bank reportedly plans to raise 1 billion shillings (about $6.89 million) through an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE).

The move would mark the first IPO on the NSE since 2014 when the exchange listed itself, Bloomberg reported Monday (Aug. 28). However, the timing of the listing and the number of shares to be offered are still subject to regulatory and investor approval.

The primary objective of the IPO is to augment capital and reward shareholders, with Credit Bank also intending to introduce an employee share ownership plan, according to the report. Earlier this year, the bank received regulatory approval to transfer a 20% stake to private equity fund Shorecap III LP, based in Mauritius, which aimed to strengthen its capital base.

The NSE’s all-share index has experienced a decline of 22% this year, making it one of the sharpest declines among global indexes tracked by Bloomberg, the report said.

In other African IPO news, it was reported Tuesday (Aug. 22) that Nigerian payments company Flutterwave is planning to go public. Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola told Bloomberg at the time that the company had made progress in resolving financial impropriety claims in Kenya so it could find new and bigger global partners.

Kenya also made headlines Aug. 2 when the nation’s Ministry of the Interior suspended the operations of Worldcoin — OpenAI founder Sam Altman’s identity-focused cryptocurrency — amid a government investigation.

“The government is concerned by the ongoing activities of an organization calling itself ‘WORLD COIN’ which is involved in the registration of citizens through the collection of eyeball/iris data,” Minister Kithure Kindiki said at the time.

About two weeks earlier, Kenyan telecommunications firm Safaricom teamed up with payments infrastructure TerraPay to launch a cross-border remittance partnership. In this collaboration, TerraPay’s remittance provider Mobex will let more than 30 million M-PESA mobile wallet holders in Kenya send real-time payments to Bangladesh and Pakistan. In the months ahead, the companies plan to bring the program to India and Nepal as well.

Mobile payments in Kenya have been on the rise as the country’s central bank continues to push for the adoption of the M-PESA service, the companies said at the time.