SACCOs (Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies) have continued to expand their digital credit offerings despite increasing competition from commercial banks and other digital credit providers licensed by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).
These financial outfits have also managed to keep their heads above the water, despite being locked out of the National Payments System and lacking a liquidity facility to assist those that are in distress.
According to the latest Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority (SASRA) Report, this is demonstrated by an increase in the number of approved digital financial products from 345 in 2024 to 407 in 2025, representing a 17.97% increase.
Similarly, the number of SACCOs offering these digital products increased from 236 to 267 during the same period.
SACCOs have moved to USSD platforms, Agency Banking, and Internet-based Platforms
SACCOs have increasingly adopted alternative financial service delivery channels through SACCO agency, agency banking, USSD platforms, and internet-enabled applications to expand outreach, improve operational efficiency, and deepen financial inclusion.
In particular, the SACCO Agency has been prominently adopted by SACCOs and saw an increase in the number of SACCO agents from 4,247 in 2024 to 4,377 in 2025, operated by 40 and 42 SACCOs respectively.
Additionally, SACCOs continued to expand their digital credit offerings despite increasing competition from commercial banks and other digital credit providers licensed by the Central Bank of Kenya. This is demonstrated by an increase in the number of approved digital financial products from 345 in 2024 to 407 in 2025, representing a 17.97% increase.
Similarly, the number of SACCOs offering these digital products increased from 236 to 267 during the same period.
The SACCO industry continues to heavily rely on third-party financial institutions, mainly commercial banks, as well as fintech companies, to deliver their financial services and products through alternative financial delivery channels.
SACCO Financial Delivery Modes
The main alternative financial delivery channels deployed by SACCOs through commercial banks and fintech companies include mobile money delivery channels, ATM connectivity, Cheque financial services, Pesalink connectivity, digital credit and loans, SACCO agency business, among others, which are gaining traction in place of the capital-intensive traditional brick-and-mortar branch networks.
To ward off competition from other financial institutions, SACCOs must, as a necessity, embrace these technologically driven financial services delivery channels, while retaining their member-owned, member-managed, and member-customer comparative advantage.
The connectivity to mobile money by SACCOs is either through subscription to USSD codes or internet-based applications. Out of the 357 SACCOs in 2025, a total of 250 of them, constituting 70.03% of all SACCOs, had deployed USSD codes for their members to access financial services.
This was a sharp increase in the number of SACCOs using USSD code accessibility services from 245 SACCO Societies, representing about 69.01% of all the SACCOs, which were offering USSD code accessibility services to their members in 2024, and thus underscores the demand for USSD code-enabled financial services by members of SACCOs.
Mobile money connectivity may be made through either a USSD code available in both feature and smart phones or through internet-enabled devices and applications.
In 2025, just 184 SACCOs, comprising 51.54% of all the SACCOs, had mobile money financial services through internet-enabled devices and applications in 2025.
This was a slight increase from the 171 SACCOs, representing 48.17% of all the SACCOs, which had deployed the service in 2024.
Mobile money connectivity is progressively gaining traction in the SACCO industry, as it is in other sectors of the economy, but SACCOs are forewarned of the cyber risks associated with these services.
SACCOs continue to rely heavily on ATM connectivity, payment, and settlement services provided by commercial banks in order to enable their members access cash withdrawals and deposits, as well as make other direct payment transactions to third parties.
The ATM connectivity services are, however, available for the SACCOs segment only, where a proportion of 62.57% of all the SACCOs had ATM connectivity services in 2025, which is a slight decrease from a proportion of 64.97% of the SACCOs with ATM connectivity in 2024.
The ATM connectivity service providers for SACCOs include Cooperative Bank of Kenya, which remains the most dominant payment and settlement platform being used by SACCOs, with a total of 110 SACCOs using the platform in 2025.
Other emergent payment and settlement platforms for ATM connectivity services for deposit-taking SACCOs are ABC Bank Ltd, Family Bank Ltd, Interswitch Ltd, and Sidian Bank.
