The fee for accessing eCitizen services will double to Sh100 in changes that will see the charge based on cost of service and look set to make thousands of government services costlier.
Kenyans will now pay Sh100 as ‘convenience fee’ for all services costing over Sh100,000 while those priced between Sh10,000-Sh99,999 will attract a fee of Sh70. Currently, the charge is a flat rate of Sh50.
Doubling of the fee will add to the cost of accessing at least 30,000 government services on eCitizen but hand a windfall to the government in its quest for more revenue collections.
The push to double the fee is part of regulations that the State is banking on to anchor the convenience charge in law, a year after the High Court declared the fee illegal.
‘There shall be a convenience fee charged for some service offered by a national or county government entity onboarded in the System,’ Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi says in the Public Finance Management (E-Citizen System Management) Regulations, 2026.
‘The convenience fee shall not be charged for any services in the System that are offered free of charge.’
The lowest convenience fee will be Sh5 for services costing between Sh100 to Sh499 while all those costing less than Sh99 will be free.
Some of the services that cost more than Sh500 on eCitizen include business registrations, passport applications, amendments to birth and death certificates and re-registration of birth.
Increased fee will increase the cost of eCitizen services but hand a windfall to the three companies behind the platform.
An audit report shows that the shadowy firms behind the eCitizen platform raked in Sh1.45 billion in the year ended June 2024.
The platform is run by a consortium of three companies with one offering technical support and onboarding services while the other aggregates payments and handles incoming payments to the State. The third company handles communications such as bulk SMSs.
The three firms are Pesaflow Limited, Webmasters Kenya and Olivetree Limited.
The government took full ownerships of eCitizen in 2023 but has a contract with the three firms to maintain of the platform in return for a fee , estimated at between Sh100 million- Sh200 million a month.
Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu raised concerns over the influence that the three have on eCitizen, adding that lack of a backup for the system is a significant threat.
President William Ruto recently said that at least 30,000 government services are now offered via eCitizen with daily collections at Sh2 billion.
Dr Ruto has on several occasions lauded the eCitizen saying that it has removed bottlenecks that hampered access to thousands of government services. But Kenyans have decried the convenience fee, especially when the charge is almost as high as the service being offered.
The regulations, currently before the public for scrutiny come a year after the High Court declared the Sh50 convenience fee as illegal, discriminatory, amounted to a double charge and one that was adopted without public participation.
The government subsequently filed a petition at the Court of Appeal but lost it in November last year, triggering the latest push to anchor the fee in regulations.
The State had argued that that Kenyans risked missing out on thousands of government services unless the High Court was reversed, adding that the convenience fee caters for maintenance and contractual obligations.
Mr Mbadi says that all national and county government entity offering services via the eCitizen will cease to operate any revenue bank accounts for collection of the funds.