Polite smiles, soft language and friendly suggestions to pay for premium services at VFS Global – the firm hired by a number of countries to manage their visa and consular services – often meet many Kenyan applicants at the counter.
Often, that is followed by friendly suggestions to pay for premium services such as delivery of the visa by courier to the applicant’s preferred destination or for SMS notifications when the document is ready.
The fear of enduring queues, which at times means sitting idle for an entire working day and possibly skipping meals, terrifies many applicants who opt into the premium service at an extra cost.
The Kenya passport. A former staffer at VSF Globals says that the frustration of queues and application rejection is part of a strategy designed to corner unwitting Kenyans into paying for premium services.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Arnold*, a former staff at VFS Global, the world's largest visa outsourcing services provider, said in an interview with the Nation that the frustration of queues and, at times application rejection, is part of a strategy designed to corner unwitting Kenyans into the premium service. He agreed to speak to us in confidence.
Arnold added that staff are trained on conventional and unconventional ways of marketing the premium services.
Global non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports analysed some financials from VFS Global and established that the premium services have become a key revenue stream for the firm, while also opening the door for discrimination of those unwilling to part with more money.
“We would train on how to sell these services over the counter. Not all of them were mandatory such as an extra SMS, photocopying or courier service. It was a mandatory thing that we would try to convince them,” Arnold said in the interview.
“We would ask ‘could you please just take this because we are freeing up the traffic around the centre?’”
Another technique for selling SMS services was giving them the total amount, inclusive of the SMS and courier service. Most customers would just accept this, but if they would notice we would just do the normal service,” Arnold added.
The former VFS staff added that when he worked there, employees who helped rake in the most money from premium services would be rewarded.
“Of course we were being rewarded as employees. The person who was being rewarded would use any method possible to make a sale. Another way was to tell the client ‘we don’t want you to go back to the queue,’ while you promised them a new service especially if they saw a crowd, they would buy the courier services out of fear of coming back to the centre and queueing again,” Arnold said.
VFS Global denied the allegations of a system rigged to ensure it unfairly profits from premium services, insisting that the firm maintains zero-tolerance for misconduct and frauld.
Photo credit: Pool
In Kenya, the company provides various visa services on behalf of at least 20 countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Australia and China.
VFS Global denied the allegations of a system rigged to ensure it unfairly profits from premium services, insisting that the firm maintains zero-tolerance for misconduct and fraud, collaborating with local law enforcement wherever credible evidence exists, and ensuring transparent reporting to client governments.
“Any suggestion that VFS Global’s financial growth has been generated through improper conduct is false.”
They add, “The investigation led by Lighthouse reports was based on selective excerpts from documents obtained through requests, anonymous and unverified testimony from unnamed former employees, and individual anecdotal accounts.”
VFS said its “financial performance reflects a legitimate structural shift in its efficiency, and the deepening of long-term government partnerships,” and that it has a strict policy against coercion or misrepresentation in the sale of optional services.
The company added, “It is false and baseless to claim that there was an increased focus on VAS (Value-Added Services) sales after Blackstone’s investment; there has been no material change to VAS revenue per application since their investment. Any suggestion to the contrary would be false and misleading.” Blackstone is an American investment management company that bought a controlling stake in VFS Global.
Jemimah* and her daughter spent eight hours at VFS Global offices in 2025 as they sought a visa to travel to the Netherlands.
“On the day, my daughter and I were the second and third to arrive [respectively.] This was at around 8.10am. An hour and a half later a woman finally called us to counter,” says Jemimah, who agreed to speak on condition that we protect her identity.
The woman at the counter informed Jemimah that additional information was required from the country she was travelling to. After contacting the authorities in the other country, they however confirmed that the information was not required.
“When I informed the lady about what I had been told, she did not take me challenging her decision well and insisted that I must get that information in order to complete my application. I did just that. However, when I came back, she told me to take another ticket number. She told me ‘nimemalizana na wewe’ meaning ‘I am done with you’. That really bothered me because she was the whole reason I had been running up and down.” Jemimah says.
A man who had also waited for hours got irritated and loudly questioned staff why some people were not being served.
“One of the staff members told us that they would be serving us soon. While sitting there, a number of people mentioned that if one wants (fast) service, they have to pay the extra Sh5,000,” Jemimah said.
Jemimah and her daughter felt trapped. She could not take her daughter, a minor, for lunch as they risked being skipped in the event their ticket number was called out when out of the building.
“It’s almost as if when you challenge the staff there, you get punitive reactions… But what really angered me was that they had also treated my daughter that way. This was her first experience and she is a minor. She wasn’t able to eat all day considering that if we left at any point, our ticket number could have been called out. That’s when I decided to take further action,” Jemimah added.
Jemimah wrote to the Netherlands Embassy and to the VFS officials, whom she says responded with what appeared to be automated responses. In the series of emails, one of the officials from the visa centre addressed Jemimah using someone else’s name, which she says points to the lack of attention paid to complaints from clients. No action was taken thereafter.
The fear of enduring queues terrifies many visa applicants who opt into VSF Global's premium service at an extra cost.
Photo credit: Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation Media Group
An investigation by Lighthouse Reports, a global non-profit newsroom organisation, with 14 media partners across 12 countries, correlates some of the concerns raised by Jemimah.
The investigation has revealed that VFS has earned significant profits from selling “optional” value added services to customers. Often adding these “optional” services to customers’ bills without their consent.
In recent years, VFS global sales income has increased far out of proportion to the number of visas it processes. Its company accounts consistently attribute its growth to value added services and its profits increased four-fold between 2017 and 2025.
In 2023, Italy published a report on an inspection they had carried out on the companies that it had outsourced its visa services to. Nairobi and Mombasa were among the listed cities that were inspected. VFS Global was the centre handling visa applications from Kenya at the time.
“Irregularities found: appointments made outside the booking system. Remedy applied: the VFS staff involved was immediately replaced; the VFS IT Office provide the Embassy an autonomous access at the booking system in order to immediately check for irregularities,” the Italian report reads in part.
“Operational Challenges: ESP (External Service Provider) staff training and waiting time,” the report further states.
The appointments made outside of the booking system have been flagged as high-risk tactics for corruption. Critics say that brokers, who have access to these systems, have been using the high demand for appointment slots to circumvent the system.
Arnold, the former VFS staffer, said in the interview that some bookings were made outside of the booking system, especially with Schengen countries.
However, the issue extends beyond Kenya’s borders. On January 21, 2025, a Ugandan applicant wrote to the Swedish migration department narrating a troubling experience that she went through at VFS in Uganda.
The applicant stated that the staff member serving her explicitly asked for a bribe to expedite the processing of her visa. The complainant stated that while at the centre, she observed five other individuals who were distressed about a similar experience, although they did not receive their visas despite paying an additional sum of money.
The complainant framed her experience as a habitual practice of misconduct at VFS global where the hopes and resources of applicants were being exploited.
According to a copy of the email exchange obtained from the Swedish Migration Agency, the entire summary of the report is redacted, except in the final part, which states that, “Measures have been taken to prevent future violations and strengthen personal information handling protocols.” According to sources familiar with the matter, the staff involved in the incident were dismissed.
In 2023, the Czech Republic conducted an inspection into its External Service Providers for Visa Centres, which included VFS.
They noted that “due to a high business-oriented approach, these providers tend to offer continuous and sometimes strenuous additional services to applicants.”
In yet another report published by the Czech Republic in 2024, they published a report following an inspection they conducted. They listed VFS Global as the main provider and observed a similar trend, adding that according to some consulates, “excessive pressure” was being applied to promote their additional services.
This led to misunderstandings as some clients mistakenly believed that purchasing services such as the VIP lounge would guarantee that they would be granted a visa.
Lighthouse reports analysed two weeks’ worth of receipts from Kenyan applications who wanted to travel to Sweden.
The receipts were part of the information that was secured under Sweden’s Freedom of Information legislation, which grants the public and media the right and access to official documents held by authorities in the interest of transparency.
Some 131 receipts were examined from Kenya. A breakdown was then generated, which calculated how much was paid by applicants in Value Added Services such as SMS and courier services.
The results found that 41 per cent of the revenue VFS made in just two weeks came from value added services. In their sample, 11 per cent of VFS total revenue came from SMS notifications, which were charged at Sh265.
*Lenny, who was also an applicant at the VFS centre in Nairobi, says that he did not get value for the money he paid to VFS.
“I believe they make non-premium services as frustrating as possible to force as many people to opt for the premium option. The process was very laborious for me,” he states.
A 2024 evaluation of Sweden Visa Application Centre in Nairobi identified some deficiencies, including the collection of biometrics and data quality errors when registering visa applications at VFS in Nairobi. These errors included missing documents, scans of documents belonging to another applicant, among other errors.
The report also noted that at the time, the visa fee charge was Sh13,900 and M-Pesa payment was the only mode of payment offered to applicants. The report noted that the applicant covered the Sh62 transaction cost.
“Although it is a small amount, according to point II.3.4.5 of the Visa Code Handbook 1, the means of payment may not trigger additional transaction fees or bank fees for the applicant,” the report noted.
In the same year, the Swedish Migration Agency was working to impose penalties on VFS Global due to persistent lack in the quality of data at visa application centres.
Reports indicate that in 2022, Blackstone, a private equity firm majority owned by Stephen Schwarzman, a major financier of US President Donald Trump’s political operations, bought a reported 75 per cent stake in the company for $1.87 billion (Sh241.9 billion).
Former employees from an East African country who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the pressure to sell value added services at VFS in Nairobi increased after the entry of Blackstone.
That was the turning point, the former employees said, as weekly meetings were introduced, in which promotion of the premium services was the main agenda.
