As Network Expands To 38 Countries This Year
The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) has set a target of achieving full coverage of African countries within the next five years as it enters the second phase of its expansion.
 
Speaking at a media parley in Lagos on Friday, Chief Executive Officer of PAPSS, Mike Ogbalu III, said PAPSS is currently connected to 30 African countries and expected to increase the number to about 38 countries before the end of 2026.
 
According to him, the immediate target is to achieve about 80 per cent coverage, including all the continent’s major economies, while the longer-term goal is to bring all African countries onto the payment infrastructure.
 
“Our key target is to achieve 80 per cent, which will include all the major economies. But by the end of the next five years, we expect to have all countries,” Ogbalu said.
 
He noted that South Africa remains the only major African economy yet to join the PAPSS infrastructure, adding that discussions with the country have been positive.
 
“The only big market that we do not yet have on the continent is South Africa. But we are engaging and the engagement has been positive. We have been able to address most of the issues that they have raised and we hope that soon they will join,” he said.
 
Ogbalu disclosed that PAPSS has completed the first phase of its rollout, which focused on spreading the infrastructure across the continent and has moved into a second phase, which centred on deepening adoption and developing more services for the end users.
 
He also stated that the first phase involved building the payment infrastructure, connecting central banks, commercial banks, financial institutions and payment switches across Africa.
 
According to him, PAPSS has connected about 200 financial institutions and more than 60 switches across the continent, including 10 national switches.
 
He pointed out that the system has also reduced the time required for cross-border payments in Africa from between three and five days to as low as seven seconds, representing a 99 per cent reduction in transaction time.
 
Ogbalu also stated that PAPSS has reduced the cost of cross-border payments by as much as 95 per cent and recorded transaction volume growth of more than 1,000 per cent this year compared with the previous year.
 
He said the next phase would focus on making the infrastructure more useful to consumers, small businesses, merchants and technology companies.

“We have created an infrastructure that allows technology people to create on a platform. People are now innovating around the user experience that ties this infrastructure to the end users,” he said.
 
On transaction movement, he said that PAPSS is increasingly seeing transactions move from bank branches to mobile banking, internet banking, USSD and other digital channels.
 
According to him, banks that integrate PAPSS into their digital channels have recorded between three and four times increases in transaction volumes.
 
He also noted that PAPSS was creating opportunities for African businesses to see the continent’s population of about 1.4 billion people as a single market.