East Africa’s petroleum retail sector is undergoing a structural overhaul as legacy banking meets fintech innovation.
KCB Bank Kenya has entered a strategic partnership with payments firm Pesapal to deploy the Pesapal Forecourt Management Solution across 10,000 fuel dealers.
The initiative aims to bridge the working capital gap that has long stifled independent retailers, primarily due to the opacity of manual accounting and high rates of inventory shrinkage.
For decades, fuel retailers have operated in a cash-heavy, paper-based environment. This lack of digital records made it nearly impossible for financial institutions to validate revenue streams or assess credit risk, locking dealers out of formal lending markets.
The new framework creates a closed-loop ecosystem. The Forecourt Management Solution digitizes the entire value chain:
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Real-time tracking of fuel stock
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Integrated digital processing
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Automated financial reporting
“The sustainable growth of the petroleum industry has long been constrained by manual errors and inventory shrinkage,” noted Agosta Liko, Founder of Pesapal. By automating these processes, the technology creates a verifiable data trail that eliminates revenue leakage.
For KCB Bank, this partnership represents a fundamental change in risk assessment. Rather than relying solely on historical financial statements, which are often outdated or inaccurate, the bank can leverage real-time performance metrics to extend stock financing.
“We are going beyond financing to support operational efficiency, sustainability, and growth across the entire oil and gas value chain,” said Annastacia Kimtai, Managing Director at KCB Bank Kenya.
As regulatory requirements tighten and consumer demand for digital payments grows, the “black box” nature of independent fuel retailing is becoming obsolete. This partnership suggests that the future of SME lending in Africa will rely less on physical assets and more on the ability to capture and monetize high-fidelity operational data.
