In the latest episode of the Pure Digital Passion Podcast, I had the immense pleasure of sitting down with Kamau Kunyiha, the Regional CEO for East & Southern Africa and CEO of Creditinfo CRB Kenya.

Our conversation took place during a major milestone for Creditinfo — the launch of their next-generation Identity | KYC | Fraud solution, a groundbreaking eKYC platform that is being rolled out first in Kenya, their most advanced market globally in terms of digital financial services.

Kamau has been at the heart of the credit intelligence space in Kenya and the rest of Africa for over 20 years. He’s helped shape the evolution of credit bureaus from the days of manual reporting and limited data sharing, to today’s sophisticated analytics, real-time decisioning engines, and fraud prevention systems. In many ways, his personal story mirrors the transformation of credit itself in Kenya and the wider African region.

From Entrepreneur to Credit Intelligence Trailblazer

Kamau’s journey into the world of credit wasn’t a planned one. As he shared with me, it all started with an entrepreneurial pursuit in digital airtime distribution, which eventually led to a pivotal partnership with Steve Mills, the founder of CRB Africa. That serendipitous connection introduced Kamau to the nascent credit bureau industry in the early 2000s — long before there was any regulatory framework in place.

Since then, he’s been instrumental in launching and scaling credit bureau operations across several African countries, including Kenya, where Creditinfo received its license in 2015. The path was anything but easy. Creditinfo entered the market as the third licensed bureau, facing stiff competition from entrenched incumbents and a fragmented data environment.

What followed was a strategic pivot — from focusing solely on bureau data to becoming a trusted analytics and decisioning partner for financial institutions. This included the rollout of IDM (Instant Decisioning Module) — a SaaS-based platform that enables real-time, rules-based credit decisions. Today, IDM powers solutions for leading lenders like Safaricom.

Why Kenya? Why Now?

A central theme of our discussion was the launch of Creditinfo’s eKYC platform — and why Kenya was chosen as the first global market.

According to Kamau, Kenya’s maturity in mobile money adoption, digital banking, and open-minded regulatory environment made it the perfect launchpad. The platform addresses an urgent need: enabling lenders to onboard customers digitally while mitigating growing threats like identity theft, account fraud, and synthetic identities.

In Kamau’s words, “We’ve moved from helping lenders identify bad apples, to helping them find the best customers.” The focus now is not just on managing risk, but on enhancing customer experience, ensuring financial inclusion, and building digital trust.

The Road Ahead: From Data to Decision to Trust

As we delved deeper, it became clear that Creditinfo is no longer just a credit bureau — it’s evolving into a digital risk intelligence and identity partner for financial institutions. This includes integrating tools like psychometrics, AI-driven credit scoring, fraud signals, and even blockchain-based cross-border identity sharing.

Kamau also shared his thoughts on the role of regulators, partnerships with government entities, and what it takes to build a sustainable credit ecosystem in Africa. He believes the future lies in seamless digital onboarding, where multiple data points — from IPRS to mobile usage — converge to verify identity, predict risk, and enable safe lending.

For fintechs and digital lenders, Creditinfo’s eKYC offering opens new possibilities to scale with speed, confidence, and compliance — all while keeping fraud at bay. If you’re in fintech, banking, or simply interested in the future of digital finance and identity in Kenya and beyond, this is a must-listen episode!

You can learn more about Creditinfo’s new eKYC solution by visiting ⁠https://shorturl.at/TcVkJ

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