Kenyan fintech startup Kwendo is shaking up how Africa’s casual workforce is paid, introducing a payroll-embedded financial wellness platform that blends offline micro-apps with digital payments.
Founded in 2023 by Henry Ohanga, Kwendo aims to bring millions of day-to-day workers, often paid in cash or handwritten records, into the financial system.
Adding that uptake has been “strong and sticky” as employers begin shifting from monthly to weekly pay cycles, Ohanga says:
“We’re embedding directly at payroll to turn verified work data into portable financial opportunities.”
What to Know About Kwendo
Kwendo is more than a basic payroll app. The Nairobi-based startup provides businesses in construction, cleaning, logistics, and other casual-labour sectors with simple, offline-friendly software that digitises salary processing and records work data in real time.
On the worker side, every payment creates a verified transaction history, which can be used to access micro-savings, low-interest loans, and affordable insurance.
By embedding at the point where wages are disbursed, Kwendo turns employers into “trust anchors,” allowing workers to build a financial footprint without needing a traditional bank account or continuous internet access.
What the Problem Is
Across East Africa, over 20 million casual workers still receive their wages in cash or through handwritten payroll books.
This outdated system exposes businesses to “ghost workers”, fake employees who collect salaries, while also creating opportunities for payroll fraud and wage theft.
For workers, the absence of digital records means no proof of income, which blocks them from mainstream financial services like credit facilities or formal savings plans.
Traditional payroll providers largely cater to salaried office employees, and micro-lenders that do target casual workers often charge predatory interest rates, deepening financial insecurity.
Kwendo’s Ideation
Seeing this gap, Henry Ohanga and his team designed Kwendo as an “offline-first” solution that could function even where internet connectivity is patchy.
“We designed pain-point-specific micro-apps that work offline and embed directly at the payroll layer, where businesses already manage work data and pay,” Ohanga said.
By integrating into the payroll process rather than adding a separate digital layer, Kwendo reduces the learning curve for employers and keeps operational changes minimal.
The platform effectively bridges the digital divide by working on basic smartphones and by allowing employers to process wages even in remote job sites with intermittent service.
Kwendo’s Growth So Far
Despite being barely two years old, Kwendo has onboarded 79 businesses and digitised wages for more than 3,000 workers, mainly in Nairobi and its surrounding peri-urban areas.
About 88 percent of registered workers are paid month after month using the system, while 92 percent of employers have already run multiple payroll cycles, signalling high retention on both sides.
Ohanga notes that many employers are now switching from monthly to weekly pay cycles, an indicator of trust and an acknowledgment of worker needs for more frequent cash flow.
This traction suggests that Kwendo’s model is not just a pilot but a repeatable, scalable service for high-volume payroll management.
Money aside, Kwendo earns more
Kwendo operates on a dual-revenue model. Businesses pay roughly US$7 per worker per month for digitized payroll services.
In addition, Kwendo earns margins from the financial products it offers workers, such as savings accounts, small loans, and insurance packages, leveraging the verified payroll data to negotiate better terms with financial partners.
This approach has already delivered US$10,000 in monthly recurring revenue, with a growth rate of 18 percent month-on-month.
Kwendo remains founder-funded and angel-backed but is currently raising a US$250,000 bridge pre-seed round to accelerate expansion and build out its technology infrastructure.
Challenges and Plans for Future
Building technology for fragmented, mostly offline markets has posed hurdles. Many employers initially resist change, wary of moving away from familiar pen-and-paper systems.
“Many investors underestimate the size of Africa’s informal workforce,” Ohanga said, pointing to fundraising as another challenge.
Kwendo overcame early barriers by creating micro-apps tailored to specific pain points, ensuring they function offline, and by integrating at the payroll layer to avoid disrupting existing workflows.
In the near term, Kwendo plans to expand into Uganda and Tanzania, markets with similar payroll inefficiencies.
Longer term, it aims to enter West Africa, where informal workers represent an even larger share of GDP and where digitized payroll could unlock billions in new financial activity.
Why This Matters
Africa’s informal economy is estimated to be worth about US$600 billion annually, employing a majority of the continent’s workforce.
By converting routine payroll data into a financial access gateway, Kwendo could enable millions of casual labourers to save securely, qualify for affordable credit, and purchase essential insurance, tools that strengthen household resilience and economic mobility.
For governments and micro-finance institutions, the platform offers a trusted data pipeline that could drive tax compliance, enhance social protection programmes, and support broader economic inclusion.
With recurring software revenues and high-margin financial services, Kwendo is positioning itself as a core piece of Africa’s future financial infrastructure, tackling a challenge that is both massive and largely untapped.
Talking Point
Kwendo’s model highlights how embedded fintech can solve long-standing structural problems in Africa’s informal economy by meeting users where they already operate, at the payroll layer.
Rather than trying to onboard casual workers directly into banking apps, Kwendo digitizes the most trusted transaction they have, their wages, then layers financial services on top of that verified data.
Technically, its offline-first micro-app architecture is critical, allowing seamless operation in areas with unstable connectivity while capturing granular work records that can be analyzed for risk scoring, creditworthiness, and payroll integrity.
This approach not only reduces fraud for employers but also creates a portable financial identity for workers, a prerequisite for inclusive credit and insurance markets.
If Kwendo can maintain its current 18 percent month-over-month revenue growth and replicate its infrastructure across Uganda, Tanzania, and West Africa, it could become a foundational fintech rail for the continent’s US $600 billion informal sector, demonstrating how well-designed, lightweight technology can bridge the gap between cash economies and full digital participation.
