It should not be easier for money to travel from Nairobi to New York than from Nairobi to Lagos. Yet, in too many cases, that is still how Africa’s cross-border payment system behaves.

A Kenyan business buying goods from Nigeria may invoice in one African currency and pay from another, but the transaction can still depend on dollars, correspondent banks outside the continent, multiple compliance layers and several days of waiting. The goods are moving within Africa. The payment often takes a global scenic route.

This is the fundamental problem that the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, better known as PAPSS, was created to solve. PAPSS addresses the historic challenges of making payments across African borders, adding value through a common African market infrastructure for all stakeholders, from governments, banks and payment providers to corporates, small enterprises and individuals. It is also why the latest update from PAPSS deserves more than a simple update of network numbers and growth percentages.

At a media briefing in Lagos on the 16th of September 2026, PAPSS CEO Mike Ogbalu III said the platform now operates in more than 30 African countries across all five regions. It connects 24 national and regional central banks, more than 200 commercial banks and payment service providers, and 16 switches. Through partners, its termination footprint extends to more than 300 financial institutions.

These numbers demonstrate impressive growth. But the more significant announcement was that PAPSS believes it has largely completed the first phase of building, connecting and establishing trust. From 2027, its emphasis will move towards market activation, wider adoption and transaction growth.

This transition is critical because Africa does not really need yet another payment rail — it needs an existing rail to become useful at scale.

The Growth Is Real, But There Are Question Marks

PAPSS says transaction volumes grew by approximately 1,000% between comparable periods in 2025 and 2026, while transaction values increased by around 120%. Nigeria recorded an even larger increase in volumes of approximately 1,100%, alongside value growth of 125%.

These are clearly impressive percentages, but percentages alone can mask a small starting number. PAPSS has not disclosed the underlying number of transactions or their total value in the briefing, which makes it difficult to judge the platform’s scale against Africa’s overall cross-border payment flows. The next stage of PAPSS’s public reporting should therefore include absolute volumes, values, active users, corridor-level activity, average transaction sizes and repeat usage.

There is, however, an interesting detail inside the two growth rates. If transaction volumes grew elevenfold while total value grew 2.2 times, the implied average value per transaction fell to roughly one-fifth of its previous level. That does not prove why the change happened, but it suggests the network may be moving beyond a smaller number of high-value institutional payments towards more frequent, lower-value transactions which may suggest more mainstream uptake. 

If this understanding is correct then things are indeed moving in the rigtht direction, which is encouraging. A Pan-African payment system will not transform African trade if it works only for governments, large corporates and banks. Its impact will ultimately be measured by whether a small importer, an e-commerce platform, a logistics company, a consultant or a family sending money across a border can use it without needing to understand what actually makes it work. 

PAPSS also reported cost savings of between 92% and 95% per transaction, a 99.99% reduction in processing time and a reduction of up to 80% in foreign-exchange requirements. These are potentially game changing numbers but we need a much better sense of the context from which they are derived. Savings against which traditional route? Across which corridors? At what transaction size? Ultimately, how much of the benefit reaches the customer after a participating institution applies its own charges and foreign-exchange spread?

The numbers should be treated as a strong platform claim rather than a complete assessment until the methodology and underlying corridor data are published. This is not me being cynical but it’s the kind of transparency that a system entering its scale phase should anticipate. 

PAPSS Is Becoming A Stack, Not Just A Payment Switch

PAPSS is sometimes described as though it were a single faster-payments product. It is becoming something more ambitious: a stack of financial infrastructure intended to address different parts of the same cross-border problem.

The first layer is the PAPSS Instant Payment System. A sender instructs a bank or payment provider in a local currency, PAPSS validates and routes the instruction, and the receiving institution pays the beneficiary in their local currency. According to PAPSS’s technical overview, customer payments are designed to complete within 120 seconds. Behind that simple experience sit pre-funded accounts, central-bank real-time gross settlement systems, daily net settlement and Afreximbank’s role in settling the equivalent hard-currency position. In other words, the customer sees a near-instant transfer because considerable institutional infrastruture has been built around it.

The second layer is the PAPSS African Currency Marketplace, or PACM, launched in 2025 with African deep-technology company Interstellar. PAPSS says Africa’s fragmented landscape of 41 currencies and limited convertibility contributes to an estimated US$5 billion in annual fees, delays and opportunity costs. PACM is intended to create a transparent market where eligible participants can exchange African currencies more directly instead of routinely passing through the dollar or another hard currency. Its pilot reportedly involved more than 80 African corporates and 12 currency pairs.

The third layer is PAPSSCARD, launched in June 2025 as a Pan-African card scheme. Its strategic approach aims to reduce the continent’s reliance on payment infrastructure and settlement arrangements controlled elsewhere, while keeping more of the economics and transaction data within Africa.

Together, the three products represent a more complete thesis. Payment speed is important, but it is not enough. More importantly, Africa also needs local-currency liquidity, acceptance infrastructure, reliable settlement and distribution through the channels people already use.

This is where the matter of financial sovereignty becomes more practical rather than being ideological. The objective is not to pretend that the dollar will disappear from African trade. It is to ensure that two African parties are not forced to use a third currency and an offshore route when a direct, regulated and economically sensible local-currency option is available. The obvious logic of this approach is undeniable. 

Kenya Shows Why Distribution Will Decide The Outcome

For Kenya, PAPSS is no longer a distant continental initiative. KCB and Bank of Kigali became the first banks in their respective countries to launch PAPSS in February 2025, allowing customers to send and receive cross-border payments through mobile applications and branch networks. PAPSS’s June 2026 network directory also lists African Banking Corporation, KCB and Stanbic Bank as Kenyan participants, with additional institutions reachable through its extended network.

The more important distribution step came in February 2026, when PAPSS partnered with Pesalink. The partnership was designed to connect more than 80 Kenyan banks, fintechs, SACCOs and telcos on the Pesalink network to what was then more than 160 PAPSS banks and fintechs across Africa. Payments from PAPSS participants could terminate into Kenyan banks and mobile money operators through infrastructure already embedded in the market.

This is the model PAPSS needs to replicate: do not ask the customer to discover and adopt a new continental brand if the capability can appear inside the bank application, mobile wallet, fintech platform, enterprise software or branch relationship they already trust. This ‘invisible’ implementation from a customer perspective with zero friction to adoption makes lots of sense. 

The reality is that the most successful payment infrastructure is often invisible. Kenyans and any other African customers do not think about the underlying switching, settlement and regulatory arrangements each time they send money. They think about the recipient, the amount, the cost and whether the money arrived, or not. PAPSS will reach mass relevance when a trader can pay a supplier in another African country with the same confidence and simplicity.

There is also a broader lesson here. Connecting one national switch can be more valuable than signing dozens of institutions individually because it creates distribution density. The fact that PAPSS is now connected to 16 switches may prove to be more significant than its raw country count, provided those integrations are live and commercially promoted.

Infrastructure Does Not Create Adoption On Its Own

PAPSS’s first phase was difficult: aligning central banks, regulatory requirements, commercial banks, switches, technical standards and settlement arrangements across fragmented markets is no mean feat. 

The second phase may be harder because it involves changing behaviour. Banks will need a clear commercial reason to prioritise PAPSS over established correspondent-banking relationships and other cross-border products. Fintechs will need reliable application programming interfaces (APIs), predictable settlement and room to build sector-specific services. Businesses will need transparent pricing and confidence that an inexpensive route will not create new problems in reconciliation, reversals, compliance or customer support. Consumers will need to know that the service exists, where to find it and what it costs before pressing send.

Foreign exchange liquidity remains very key. PAPSS can reduce the need for hard currency, but it cannot manufacture deep and stable markets for every African currency pair. Its pre-funding model also means participants must commit liquidity in advance. The African Currency Marketplace is an important response, but it will need enough buyers, sellers and trusted market makers to produce useful prices consistently, especially on less-traded corridors.

Regulation is another unavoidable layer. Africa’s payment markets differ in capital controls, exchange rules, customer identification, data governance, sanctions screening, transaction limits and consumer-protection regimes. A technically successful transaction is not the same thing as a commercially or regulatorily straightforward one. The network must make that complexity disappear for customers without pretending it does not exist.

Trust may be the hardest challenge of all. Cross-border payments create anxiety because an error is harder to resolve when institutions, currencies, laws and time zones differ. PAPSS will need consistent standards for failed transactions, disputes, recalls, fraud, refunds and customer communication across participating institutions. One poor experience can damage confidence in a new corridor much faster than a successful transaction can build it.

Finally, the price customers pay must be visible. The World Bank’s September 2025 remittance data put the average cost of sending money to Sub-Saharan Africa at 8.46%, compared with a global average of 6.36%. Remittances are not the same as business trade payments, but they illustrate the premium Africans continue to pay to move relatively small amounts across borders. PAPSS should make it possible to see, corridor by corridor, whether its infrastructure is closing that gap.

The Next Metric Is Not Connections — It’s Useful Activity

PAPSS has good reasons to celebrate the growth of its network. Twenty-four connected central banks, more than 200 banks and payment providers, and 16 switches give it a credible continental footprint. Ten additional countries joined during 2026 alone.

But a connected institution is not necessarily an active institution. A signed agreement is not a customer transaction. A live technical integration is not the same as prominent placement inside a banking app. Dramatic year-on-year percentage growth is not yet evidence of mass market scale.

The next phase should therefore be measured differently.

Success will mean more active corridors with two-way liquidity, not only more countries on a map. It will mean participating banks offering PAPSS through mobile, web, branch and enterprise channels with transparent fees. It will mean fintechs building services on top of the infrastructure. It will mean more repeat usage by SMEs and individuals, fewer failed transactions, faster dispute resolution and a demonstrable reduction in the hard currency required to settle intra-African trade.

It should also mean publishing more evidence. PAPSS has reached a stage where anonymised data on corridor performance, customer type, transaction size, completion rates and realised savings would strengthen the case for adoption. Infrastructure earns trust through reliability, but ecosystems earn trust through transparency.

The Rails Are Built. The Market Must Now Ride Them

I see PAPSS as one of the most important pieces of infrastructure behind the promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Tariffs, customs procedures, logistics and standards all matter, but trade cannot become meaningfully Pan-African if payments remain slow, expensive and dependent on routes outside Africa.

PAPSS has moved well beyond the PowerPoint phase. It has working infrastructure, central-bank relationships, participating financial institutions and growing transaction activity. Its expansion from 15 central banks, more than 150 banks and 14 switches in early 2025 to today’s larger network demonstrates impressive institutional momentum.

The danger now is assuming that institutional momentum automatically becomes customer adoption. It will not. Adoption will be built corridor by corridor, bank by bank and use case by use case. It will depend on pricing, liquidity, trust, customer experience and relentless distribution through platforms Africans already use. It will require PAPSS to coexist with domestic instant-payment systems, mobile-money networks, regional schemes and commercial fintechs rather than becoming another isolated layer in an already fragmented market.

Africa does not lack payment innovation. It lacks enough connected scale.

PAPSS now has a real opportunity to become the connective tissue between the continent’s national and regional payment ecosystems. If it succeeds, most customers may never need to know what the acronym stands for. They will simply know that paying someone in another African country has become faster, cheaper and far less complicated.

That is when PAPSS will have done its job.