Digital Assets on Death in Kenya: M-Pesa, Online Accounts and Cryptocurrency

Most Kenyans now hold part of their wealth in places a traditional will never mentions: an M-Pesa wallet, an email account full of financial records, a cloud drive of family photographs, or cryptocurrency on an exchange. Digital assets on death raise a practical question first and a legal one second. Who can actually get in, and what authority do they need? This article sets out what the statutes and the providers’ own published rules say, and where the law is silent.

Digital assets are still part of the estate

The Law of Succession Act defines “free property” as property that the deceased was legally competent freely to dispose of during their lifetime and in which their interest was not ended by death. Section 5(1) lets any adult of sound mind dispose of their free property by will. Nothing in the Act carves out digital property, so a balance or holding that had a value and belonged to the deceased should be treated as part of the estate. That is our reading of the text, not a point settled by a reported decision that we have found.

The consequence is that the usual controls apply. Section 45 prohibits anyone from taking possession of or disposing of the free property of a deceased person without a grant of representation or other lawful authority, and breach is an offence. Moving money out of a deceased relative’s mobile wallet, or selling their crypto, without authority may therefore expose you personally, however close the family.

M-Pesa: what Safaricom asks for

Safaricom publishes its next-of-kin claim process. According to that page, which was last updated on 27 March 2024, the account is frozen once Safaricom is told of the death, and the claimant must visit a retail centre with documents for inspection. The general list includes the claimant’s identification, the death certificate and a statutory declaration witnessed by an advocate or commissioner for oaths, together with a letter from the provincial administration, a grant of letters of administration or a grant of probate.

The documents scale with the amount. For smaller balances Safaricom accepts a letter from a chief, a Deputy County Commissioner, a County Commissioner or the Public Trustee as an alternative to a grant. For balances above 200,000 it asks for letters of administration or a grant of probate. The claimant must also have a registered M-Pesa account, because Safaricom says it does not pay out in any other form. The page does not deal with an account holder who named no next of kin, and it gives no processing times, so ask the retail centre directly. Because these requirements are set by a private company, confirm the current version before you rely on it.

Email, cloud and social media accounts

These accounts are governed by the provider’s terms and settings rather than by Kenyan succession law. Google, for example, offers an Inactive Account Manager. The account holder chooses an inactivity period and up to 10 trusted contacts, each of whom needs a phone number on file, and can choose which categories of data each contact may download. Google also says that if no plan was set, it may delete an account that has been inactive for at least two years, and that it can often work with immediate family and representatives to close a deceased person’s account and, in some cases, provide content from it.

The practical point is that a will alone should not be assumed to open an account. The person must set up the provider’s own tool while alive. The Data Protection Act, 2019 does not help either: it defines a data subject as an identified or identifiable natural person, and the Act’s text contains no reference to death.

Cryptocurrency

The Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2025, which came into force on 4 November 2025, defines a virtual asset as a digital representation of value that can be digitally traded or transferred and used for payment or investment. It licenses the businesses that deal in them. Section 31 requires a licensed provider to hold enough of each asset to meet its obligations to customers, to segregate client holdings from its own and not to expose them to its own creditors’ claims. That protects customers on a licensed platform, which matters when an estate has to recover assets from one.

The Act says nothing about what happens when a customer dies, so the exchange’s own terms will decide what it asks of an executor. The harder case is self-custody. Where the deceased held their own keys, there is no provider to ask. If nobody knows where the recovery phrase is, the assets may be lost for good. Equally, an executor who finds the phrase and moves the assets must still hold a grant, because section 45 applies to them too.

What to do while you are alive

Keep a written inventory of accounts and where they are held, without the passwords, and tell your executor where it is. Do not put passwords or recovery phrases into the will itself, because a will is generally lodged with the court when a grant is sought, and what is lodged can be inspected as part of the court file. Store them in a secure place with an instruction in the will pointing to it. Set up each provider’s legacy tool where one exists. Section 11 sets the formalities: a written will must be signed by the testator and attested by two or more competent witnesses.