Tokenisation in Kenya: KSh 10m is the headline, the 8% limb is the trap
Kenya's Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations were gazetted as Legal Notice No. 134, made on 3 July 2026 by the Cabinet Secretary to the National Treasury and published in Kenya Gazette Supplement No. 185 (Special Issue 4253), Legislative Supplement No. 103, dated 22 July 2026. Cite both supplement numbers — Kenyan supplements carry both and sources quote one or the other.
For a tokenisation business the number that circulates is KSh 10,000,000. It is correct, it is the smaller half of the requirement, and taken alone it will understate what you need to hold.
Where the figures actually live
Capital is set by the Fifth Schedule to LN 134, headed "Capital and Liquidity Requirements" and cross-referenced to regulations 6(2)(h), 85(2)(a), 85(3) and 85(12). The schedule has exactly two columns: paid-up capital and liquid capital. There is no fee column and no insurance column in it, which is worth knowing because summaries sometimes present fees as though they came from the same table. They do not — fees are in the First Schedule and insurance is regulation 88.
The tokenisation row reads: paid-up capital KSh 10,000,000; liquid capital KSh 2,000,000 or 8% of total liabilities, whichever is higher. Both figures are instrument text.
The 8% limb is the one that moves
A firm reading only the floor budgets KSh 2,000,000 of liquid capital and stops. But the requirement is the higher of the two limbs, and the percentage limb overtakes the floor as soon as total liabilities pass roughly KSh 25,000,000 — 8% of KSh 25m being KSh 2m. Beyond that point the floor is irrelevant and the requirement scales with the balance sheet.
- Total liabilities KSh 25m: liquid capital requirement KSh 2m (the floor and the percentage coincide).
- Total liabilities KSh 100m: KSh 8m.
- Total liabilities KSh 400m: KSh 32m — more than three times the paid-up figure the market quotes.
The arithmetic is ours; the 8% and the KSh 2,000,000 floor are the schedule's. A tokenisation platform whose model involves holding client obligations on balance sheet should model the liquid-capital line against its projected liabilities, not against the headline.
Regulation 85(6): what happens when you do two things
This is the provision most likely to change your plan and it is only readable in the gazetted text. Regulation 85(6) provides that a licensee undertaking more than one permissible activity holds the paid-up capital of the highest-capital category, plus fifty per cent of the paid-up capital for each additional activity.
That is neither the sum of the categories nor the highest alone, and both of those wrong readings are in circulation. Worked through for a tokenisation business:
- Tokenisation (KSh 10m) plus token issuance platform (KSh 20m): the highest is 20m, plus 50% of 10m, giving KSh 25m.
- Add an ICO licence (KSh 20m): 20m, plus 50% of 10m, plus 50% of 20m, giving KSh 35m.
Regulation 85(7) then allows the authority to raise the requirement according to a licensee's risk profile. The Fifth Schedule is a floor, not a ceiling, and how that uplift will be applied in practice is not yet known.
The fees, which are in a different schedule
The First Schedule (cross-referenced to regulations 5(1), 6(2)(u), 7, 11(3)(b), 13(1), 29(2), 49(2)(g), 61(2)(c) and 62(2)(h)) sets a tokenisation application fee of KSh 100,000 and a licence fee of KSh 500,000. Renewal is KSh 500,000 or 0.15% of gross turnover, whichever is higher.
The larger number is transactional. Approval of a virtual asset tokenisation is charged at 0.25% of the value of the successful offer, subject to a minimum of KSh 200,000 and a maximum of KSh 30,000,000. On those figures the minimum binds on offers below roughly KSh 80m and the cap binds above roughly KSh 12bn; between the two, the fee is a straight quarter of a per cent of what you raised. If your revenue model is a thin fee on issuance volume, this line belongs in the model before the licence fee does.
If you shelved Kenya on the draft numbers, look again
The National Treasury's March 2026 draft is still downloadable and still being quoted. It set tokenisation paid-up capital at KSh 200,000,000. The gazetted figure is KSh 10,000,000 — a 95% reduction. ICO and token issuance platform each fell from KSh 200m to KSh 20m. Seven of the ten capital categories came down between draft and gazette, several of them by 80–95%. A firm that abandoned a Kenyan tokenisation plan on the draft numbers was reading the draft correctly and is now wrong about the law.
What is still open
Tokenisation sits with the Capital Markets Authority under the "Responsible Relevant Regulatory Authority" column of the First Schedule to the VASP Act 2025. The statutory deadline is 4 November 2026 under section 47 of that Act, and there is no transitional provision, no savings clause and no deemed-licensing regulation anywhere in the 151 regulations. Against that, the application window has not opened, the application form has not been published, and whether a firm that has filed but not been determined may keep operating is not answered in the text. Prepare on the assumption that it is not.
The checklist behind this article
The Kenya VASP readiness checklist works through the LN 134 application pack requirement by requirement, with every item cited to its regulation or schedule, every figure marked as gazette text or as reporting of it, and the open questions above left marked open instead of answered with something plausible. USD 79, with updated editions free as the position develops.
For a single-category tokenisation applicant the checklist is the whole job and you will not need anything else from us. If you are stacking categories under regulation 85(6), or working out how the 8% limb behaves against a balance sheet that has not been built yet, the 48-hour gap check takes your actual figures.