BuuPass, the Kenyan travel-booking startup, is adding cross-border payments to its platform through a partnership with Nairobi-based digital wallet SafariBucks, as it expands beyond ticketing into corporate and regional travel.
The partnership will let travellers use SafariBucks to pay for BuuPass buses, flights and transfers, with transactions settled through local payment rails. SafariBucks’ Spend Management product will also integrate with Gavanpass, BuuPass’ corporate travel platform, allowing companies to fund and manage tax reporting for employee travel across multiple currencies.
The partnership comes as BuuPass expands into corporate travel. In April 2026, it launched Gavanpass, a platform for booking flights, hotels, buses, ground transfers and group travel, with approval workflows and real-time spend tracking. The SafariBucks integration adds a cross-border payment layer.
“We have spent eight years building the distribution layer for African travel, and what customers keep telling us is that payments, not bookings, are the harder half of the problem,” said Sonia Kabra, co-founder and co-CEO of BuuPass. “Partnering with SafariBucks lets us close that gap without asking anyone to change how they already pay. Corporate travel is where we see it landing first, and it is the fastest-growing part of our business today.”
Launched in 2016, BuuPass allows people to book intercity travel tickets for buses, trains, and flights through its proprietary software and Application Programming Interface (APIs). The platform offers inventory management, bookings, payments, and reporting across online and offline environments. It is integrated with financial and mobile money platforms, including M-PESA, MTN MoMo, First National Bank (FNB), and Vodapay. BuuPass currently operates in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and South Africa with over 150 transport operators across bus, train, and flight verticals.
The partnership comes a year after BuuPass secured an undisclosed investment from Yango Ventures, a corporate venture fund of Yango Group, to scale its infrastructure and deepen its footprint across African markets.
With the integration, an inbound tourist can load and activate a SafariBucks wallet before arriving and use it to book BuuPass buses, flights and transfers. Another tourist travelling between African countries can load the wallet in their home currency and use it through local payment rails after crossing a border. Local travellers can use the wallet to pay for BuuPass transport through payment methods they already use.
The corporate side of the partnership will run through Gavanpass. SafariBucks’ Spend Management product allows companies using the platform to consolidate travel payments. SafariBucks will handle the cross-border payment layer, while BuuPass handles the underlying travel inventory.
“Moving across East Africa has meant carrying cash you cannot spend everywhere, hunting for a SIM card at the border, or paying steep informal exchange fees,” Ali Hassan, co-founder and chief executive officer of SafariBucks, said in a Tuesday statement. “With BuuPass we are removing that friction end to end, for a tourist landing in Nairobi for the first time and for a finance team tracking travel spend across three currencies.”
The move follows a period of expansion for BuuPass. In 2024, BuuPass acquired QuickBus, a bus ticketing platform operating in Nigeria and South Africa, in a cash-and-stock deal. The acquisition brought QuickBus’ integrations and distribution relationships into BuuPass. BuuPass said it has sold over 30 million tickets and processed more than $100 million in travel transactions in 2025.
Both companies are positioning the partnership for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations, co-hosted by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. With fans expected to travel between the three countries, SafariBucks plans to handle payments while BuuPass handles movement between host cities and match venues.
The 34th edition of AFCON, held in Côte d’Ivoire in 2023, drew more than 1 million spectators and generated an 800% increase in ticket sales revenue compared with the previous edition in Cameroon. That scale of demand allows BuuPass and SafariBucks to test their cross-border travel and payment infrastructure with a large influx of travellers moving between the three host countries.
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