At the turn of the millenia, Kenya decided to prioritize the economic growth of its private sector in order to make the country more business friendly to indigenous and foreign businesses. The country’s strategic location in East Africa gives it enormous advantage and is an attractive force to foreign investors from all over the world.

Seventeen years ago the Kenyan government made public its 23 year development plan. They call it; Vision 2030. It aims to transform Kenya into a competitive and prosperous nation and provide high quality life to citizens with a clean and secure environment. The achievement of which means that the Government will be constantly reforming laws, encouraging ease of doing business and improving the country’s infrastructure.

In 2014 Kenya was ranked 56th globally for the ease of doing business. Recently, Kenya made another amendment to its Business Laws Act to enhance the ease of doing business in kenya by making significant changes in business processes.

In essence, if there is one place in East Africa to launch an International business from, it is Kenya. Here’s how to go about it.

To start a company in Kenya, one requires proper registration. The registration process can vary depending on founder’s choice of business structure.

Steps:

  1. Get a work permit from the Government and get yourself registered with National Social Security Fund (NSSF), the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), and the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF)
  2. Prepare all the required documents:
  • Memorandum of Association
  • Articles of Association
  • Company Registration form (form CR1)
  • Particulars of directors’ share (form CR2)
  • Notification of director’s residential address (form CR8)
  • Application for Company name reservation (form CR14)
  • Statement of Nominal Capital
  • Tax PIN certificates
  • Passport-sized photos of each director.
  1. Ensure all the above documents are translated into English if you are from a non English speaking country.
  2. Register with Registrar for foreign companies
  3. Apply for a Business Permit

The cost of registering a company varies depending on the type of business entity chosen. Once your company is duly registered, you need a system of receiving payments from different countries without going through the arduous traditional process of converting getting your customers to convert their home currencies into Dollars or Euro sending it through a bank in US or Europe before reaching you, where you have to convert it into Kenyan Shilling before continuing business.

To avoid all of that, use Settle as your payment gateway. Wherever you are sending products to in Africa, you customer only needs to send you the money directly from his bank using his local currency which will be exchanged directly into Kenyan Shilling and the deal is sealed.

The possibilities of doing business using settle abound. You only need to take advantage of a proven secure and fast system.