The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) has recorded a roughly 1,000% increase in transaction volumes over the past year as its network expands across the continent, positioning the platform to shift from infrastructure building to aggressive adoption growth in its next strategic phase.
Speaking at a media briefing in Lagos, Mike Ogbalu III, Chief Executive Officer of PAPSS, said the platform now operates in more than 30 African countries spanning all five regions of the continent.
The network connects 24 national and regional central banks, more than 200 commercial banks and payment service providers and 16 switches.
Through strategic partnerships, PAPSS also maintains a termination footprint reaching more than 300 financial institutions.
Roughly 10 additional countries joined the PAPSS ecosystem during 2026 alone, with further expansion expected before year-end.
“The first phase of PAPSS has been about building, connecting and establishing trust,” Ogbalu said.
“We have built the infrastructure, expanded our network across Africa and demonstrated that PAPSS can deliver tangible benefits. 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,” he added.
The usage figures underpinning that shift are striking. Between comparable periods in 2025 and 2026, transaction volumes across the network rose approximately 1,000%, while transaction values increased by roughly 120%.
Nigeria emerged as a significant contributor to that growth, posting an approximately 1,100% increase in transaction volumes and a 125% rise in transaction values over the same period.
PAPSS reports significant efficiency gains, including 92% to 95% cost savings per transaction, a 99.99% reduction in processing time and up to 80% less foreign exchange needed, addressing long-standing issues of expensive, slow intra-African payments that often involve third-party banks and currencies.
“The growth we are seeing demonstrates that the infrastructure is working and that demand is increasing as more institutions and markets participate,” Ogbalu said.
“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.”
PAPSS enables cross-border payments through participating financial institutions, including transactions settled in African currencies, connecting payment ecosystems that have historically operated in isolation within national and regional boundaries.
The platform currently offers three major solutions (the PAPSS Instant Payment System, the PAPSS African Currency Marketplace and PAPSSCARD). Additional solutions are in pilot and expected to be announced later in 2026.
The next phase of the platform’s strategy will focus on deeper market activation, greater customer awareness, developing priority payment corridors and wider availability of services through participating financial institutions.
Those plans will be discussed further at PAPSS COWRY 2026, the platform’s annual payments conference, taking place November 26 and 27 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, co-hosted with the National Bank of Ethiopia.
“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 was first announced by Afreximbank and the African Union at the Twelfth Extraordinary Summit of the African Union in Niamey, Niger, in July 2019, adopted as a key instrument for implementing the African Continental Free Trade Agreement.
It officially launched in Accra, Ghana, in January 2022. PAPSS, as a centralized financial market infrastructure, collaborates with African central banks to offer payment and settlement solutions for commercial banks and licensed payment service providers, ultimately extending these services to the public.
