Keypoints:
- PAPSS volumes rose about 1,000 percent year on year
- Network now spans more than 30 African countries
- PAPSS shifts towards mass adoption from 2027
THE Pan-African Payment and Settlement System is preparing for a major push to scale cross-border payments across Africa after reporting a roughly 1,000 percent year-on-year increase in transaction volumes and expanding its network to more than 30 countries.
PAPSS Chief Executive Officer Mike Ogbalu III said the platform would increasingly shift its attention from building financial infrastructure towards driving everyday usage as it enters the next phase of its strategy from 2027.
The move could prove important for Africa’s efforts to reduce the cost and complexity of cross-border commerce. PAPSS has spent its first phase connecting central banks, commercial banks, payment providers and switches. Its next challenge is converting those connections into sustained transactions by businesses and individuals.
The transition also comes as PAPSS pursues an ambitious longer-term objective of processing as much as 80 percent of Africa’s payments, increasing the importance of whether rapid network expansion can now translate into sustained usage.
From infrastructure to adoption
Speaking at a media briefing in Lagos, Ogbalu said PAPSS now operates across all five regions of Africa, connecting 24 national and regional central banks, more than 200 commercial banks and payment service providers, and 16 switches.
Through strategic partnerships, PAPSS says its payment termination footprint now extends to more than 300 financial institutions.
About 10 additional countries joined the PAPSS ecosystem during 2026, with further expansion expected before the end of the year.
Ogbalu said the platform’s initial phase had centred on constructing the network, connecting institutions and building trust in the system.
‘The first phase of PAPSS has been about building, connecting and establishing trust,’ he said. ‘We have built the infrastructure, expanded our network across Africa and demonstrated that PAPSS can deliver tangible benefits.’
He said that emphasis would now change.
‘As we move into our next phase from 2027, our focus will increasingly shift towards activating that network, deepening adoption and taking transaction growth to scale.’
Volumes jump 1,000 percent year on year
PAPSS says payment activity across its network has accelerated sharply as more markets and financial institutions have connected.
In the period of 2026 measured by PAPSS, transaction volumes were approximately 1,000 percent higher than during the equivalent period of 2025, while the value of transactions increased by about 120 percent year on year.
The comparison does not represent growth between the full calendar years of 2025 and 2026. It compares the same reporting period in each year.
PAPSS has not specified in the information released at the briefing exactly which months were included in that comparison.
Nigeria has been an especially significant contributor to the increase.
According to PAPSS, Nigerian transaction volumes were approximately 1,100 percent higher in the measured 2026 period than during the corresponding period of 2025, while transaction values increased by about 125 percent.
The increases are significant, although PAPSS has not disclosed the underlying absolute transaction volumes and values alongside the percentage changes.
That context matters because very large percentage increases can reflect rapid adoption from a relatively low starting base. Absolute figures would provide a clearer indication of how much payment traffic is now moving through the platform.
‘The growth we are seeing demonstrates that the infrastructure is working and that demand is increasing as more institutions and markets participate,’ Ogbalu said.
Cutting the cost of African payments
PAPSS was developed to address one of the persistent barriers to intra-African commerce: the cost and complexity of moving money between countries whose financial systems have historically operated largely within national or regional boundaries.
The problem remains significant even as African economies rapidly digitise. Recent research has highlighted a continuing cross-border payments interoperability gap, with many sophisticated domestic payment systems still struggling to communicate efficiently across national borders.
PAPSS enables participating financial institutions to process cross-border payments, including transactions using African currencies.
The platform says transactions conducted through its infrastructure have generated savings of between 92 and 95 percent per transaction, reduced processing time by 99.99 percent and cut foreign exchange requirements by as much as 80 percent.
Those figures are PAPSS estimates and remain important performance claims to watch as transaction activity expands. PAPSS did not disclose at the briefing the methodology or comparative benchmarks used to calculate those savings and efficiency gains.
The broader significance lies in the platform’s potential to reduce the need for African businesses to route payments through third-country currencies and overseas correspondent banks when trading with companies elsewhere on the continent.
That ambition closely complements the African Continental Free Trade Area, where lowering the practical cost of doing business across borders remains essential to expanding intra-African trade.
The tougher phase begins
Building the infrastructure, however, is only one part of the challenge.
For PAPSS to become a major component of Africa’s financial architecture, banks, fintech companies, merchants and consumers will need to use the system frequently enough to establish deep and dependable payment corridors.
Ogbalu said the next phase would therefore require closer integration with the financial channels businesses and consumers already use.
‘The next opportunity is to make these benefits available at much greater scale by working more closely with banks, fintechs, switches and other partners to bring PAPSS into the channels businesses and individuals use every day,’ he said.
PAPSS says its strategy will focus on deeper market activation, greater customer awareness, priority payment corridors and broader availability through participating financial institutions.
The shift from connectivity to usage is likely to provide the clearest test yet of whether PAPSS can move beyond being continental financial infrastructure and become part of routine commercial activity.
PAPSS builds wider payments ecosystem
PAPSS currently offers three major solutions: the PAPSS Instant Payment System, the PAPSS African Currency Marketplace and PAPSSCARD.
Together, they point to an ambition extending beyond bank-to-bank settlement towards a broader payments ecosystem serving financial institutions, businesses and consumers.
The launch of PAPSSCARD as a pan-African payment card marked an important expansion of that strategy towards consumer and merchant payments, alongside the platform’s existing cross-border settlement infrastructure.
New solutions are also being piloted and are expected to be announced later in 2026.
The African Currency Marketplace could become particularly important if it enables greater direct exchange between African currencies and reduces the need to use currencies such as the US dollar as an intermediary.
PAPSSCARD, meanwhile, brings the platform closer to the everyday retail payments market — an area where widespread acceptance and consumer familiarity will be crucial if PAPSS is to achieve continent-wide scale.
Scale will determine success
More details of PAPSS’s next growth phase are expected at PAPSS COWRY 2026, its annual payments conference scheduled for November 26 and 27 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in partnership with the National Bank of Ethiopia.
As PAPSS moves towards 2027, attention is likely to turn increasingly towards the numbers behind its rapid percentage growth: total transactions, value settled, active institutions, payment frequency, corridor liquidity and the number of businesses and consumers actually using the system.
Those measurements will ultimately reveal whether PAPSS is becoming a mainstream African payments network or remains an expanding infrastructure platform with considerable untapped capacity.
‘We have built the network, we have demonstrated the impact, and we are seeing usage accelerate,’ Ogbalu said.
‘Our next phase is about taking all three to scale and ensuring that payments increasingly enable, rather than limit, the ability of African businesses and individuals to participate in opportunities across the continent.’
PAPSS has demonstrated that it can connect a growing share of Africa’s financial system. The bigger test from 2027 will be whether those connections translate into payment activity at a scale capable of materially changing how Africans trade across borders.
