BuuPass is addressing one of the key challenges facing travellers across Africa: making payments across borders. The Kenyan travel-booking startup has partnered with SafariBucks to add cross-border payment capabilities to its platform and support travel bookings across multiple currencies.
The partnership will allow travellers to use SafariBucks to pay for BuuPass buses, flights and transfers. Transactions will be settled through local payment rails, giving travellers a simpler way to pay while moving between countries.
The deal also supports BuuPass’ growing focus on corporate travel. SafariBucks’ Spend Management product will integrate with Gavanpass, BuuPass’ corporate travel platform. This will allow companies to fund and manage employee travel while supporting tax reporting across multiple currencies.
Expanding Beyond Travel Bookings
The partnership comes as BuuPass expands beyond its traditional ticketing business. In April 2026, the company launched Gavanpass, a corporate travel platform that allows businesses to book flights, hotels, buses, ground transfers and group travel.
The platform also provides approval workflows and real-time spend tracking. The SafariBucks integration adds a cross-border payment layer to these services.
Sonia Kabra, co-founder and co-CEO of BuuPass, said payment challenges have become increasingly important as the company has expanded its travel network.
“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,” Kabra said.
She said the partnership with SafariBucks will help BuuPass address the issue without requiring customers to change how they already pay. Kabra added that corporate travel is currently the fastest-growing part of the business.
Founded in 2016, BuuPass enables customers to book intercity travel tickets for buses, trains and flights through its proprietary software and APIs. Its platform supports inventory management, bookings, payments and reporting across online and offline environments.
BuuPass is integrated with financial and mobile money platforms including M-PESA, MTN MoMo, First National Bank and Vodapay. The company currently operates in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa, working with more than 150 transport operators across bus, train and flight services.
Making Regional Travel Easier
The SafariBucks integration will also support tourists travelling between African countries. An inbound tourist can load and activate a SafariBucks wallet before arriving and use it to book BuuPass buses, flights and transfers.
Travellers moving between countries can load the wallet in their home currency and continue using it through local payment rails after crossing a border. Local travellers will also be able to use the wallet to pay for BuuPass transport through familiar payment methods.
SafariBucks co-founder and CEO Ali Hassan said the partnership is designed to address some of the practical payment problems faced by regional travellers.
“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,” Hassan said.
He said the partnership will help remove these challenges for both tourists arriving in Africa and finance teams managing travel spending across several currencies.
The move follows a period of expansion for BuuPass. In 2024, the company acquired QuickBus, a bus ticketing platform operating in Nigeria and South Africa, through a cash-and-stock deal. The acquisition brought QuickBus’ integrations and distribution relationships into BuuPass.
In 2025, BuuPass also secured an undisclosed investment from Yango Ventures, the corporate venture fund of Yango Group, to scale its infrastructure and deepen its presence across African markets.
BuuPass said it sold more than 30 million tickets and processed over $100 million in travel transactions in 2025. The SafariBucks partnership adds cross-border payments to that growing travel infrastructure as the company continues to expand its regional and corporate travel services.
