Treasury Unveils Plan To Replace eCitizen Convenience Fees With Access Fees

The National Treasury wants to put eCitizen’s fee structure on a firmer legal footing, and it’s doing so by scrapping the old “convenience fee” model in favour of what it’s calling “access fees.”

The proposal came before the National Assembly’s Committee on Delegated Legislation on Thursday, August 27, when Treasury officials walked MPs through the draft Public Finance Management (eCitizen System Management) Regulations, 2026.

The goal, according to Treasury, is straightforward: give the platform a proper legal framework instead of the ad hoc arrangements that have governed it so far.

The access fees, if approved, would go toward running, maintaining and managing the eCitizen system, the platform millions of Kenyans now rely on to pay for everything from passports to business permits.

Treasury officials argued that formalising these charges would not only regularise how fees are collected but also tighten government oversight of the platform more broadly.

That oversight push is written into the regulations themselves. They would place eCitizen squarely under state control, ownership, hosting, administration and maintenance all falling under the National Treasury.

Two new oversight bodies are also on the table: a Steering Committee and a Technical Committee, both meant to guide how the system is run day to day.

It didn’t take long for MPs to start picking apart the details, particularly around how much power the regulations hand to the Cabinet Secretary.

Likuyani MP Innocent Mugabe zeroed in on Regulation 14(3), which lets the Cabinet Secretary set policy direction and prescribes standards for how revenue is collected on the platform. He wasn’t convinced that was appropriate.

“On Regulation 14(3), where the Cabinet Secretary shall provide policy direction and prescribe standards for collection of revenue under the system, I think that is over-delegation,” Mugabe told the committee.

Lawmakers also pushed back on language giving the Treasury CS latitude to appoint Steering Committee members based on loosely defined criteria like “representation” and “knowledge.” Committee chair Samuel Chepkonga said the regulations need to spell out clear qualifications so that appointments are made on merit rather than discretion.

On the operational side, Treasury officials gave MPs a glimpse into how money actually moves through the system. eCitizen runs on a T+2 settlement cycle, meaning funds collected via payment providers land in a central government account at a local bank two days after each transaction.

Officials also reiterated that the platform is now entirely in government hands, following its handover from a private vendor back in 2023.

The committee did not make a final determination on the regulations during Thursday’s session, leaving the questions around executive overreach and appointment criteria unresolved for now.

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