The validity of the assumption on the predominant contribution of the stepwise processes to the ionic micelle formation/destruction in the vicinity of critical micelle concentration was investigated by molecular dynamics simulation. A coarse-grained model was used to describe the surfactant/water mixture. The cluster size distribution was estimated directly from molecular dynamics simulations or obtained from a reduced set of kinetic equations. The good agreement between two approaches shows that the neglect of the terms responsible for cluster fusion/fission is fully justified and that such processes are less important than stepwise aggregation.