Africa's Payments Revolution Is Ready to Cross Borders

The continent has built its domestic rails. Now comes the harder task: connecting them to one another. Progress is real, but it will take more than technology to close Africa's cross-border payments gap.

By Maha El Dimachki| CEO, GFTN Solutions

Something important has been steadily changing across Africa’s financial landscape. Over the past decade, many countries have put in deliberate effort to build the foundations of modern digital financial systems: national real-time payment infrastructure, widespread mobile money adoption, stronger KYC frameworks and increasingly improved settlement capabilities. While progress remains uneven across markets, the direction is clear. The conversation is no longer only about expanding domestic digital finance, but about how these systems can begin to work together across borders.

It was this question that brought central bank governors and deputy governors from West, East and Southern Africa together for a closed-door roundtable at the 2026 3i Africa Summit; a session I had the privilege of moderating. Building on the governors' dialogue held at the Inclusive FinTech Forum in Kigali two months earlier, the session deliberately broadened the group and shifted the focus from diagnosis to implementation. Their message was clear: the challenge is no longer purely technological. Increasingly, it is about coordination, trust and the political will required to align systems, standards and regulatory approaches across jurisdictions.

From Vision to Working Pilots

Cross-border integration has entered a new phase, defined less by declarations of intent than by implementation detail. Pairs of central banks in West Africa are finalising memoranda of understanding to connect their instant payment rails. In East Africa, Tanzania's national payment system is preparing to interlink with Rwanda's national switch. The agreed principle within the East African Community is that members who are ready should move ahead rather than wait for universal readiness.

Yet technical connectivity will not resolve the deeper frictions. Where businesses continue to demand settlement in hard currency, local currency systems cannot realise their potential. Central banks must do more than build systems and infrastructure; they must actively build the trust frameworks and promote confidence in it. As one participant put it, direct flights now link several African capitals multiple times a week yet once one lands, they cannot make a payment seamlessly. The expectation that financial connectivity should approach the same standard is no longer a nice to have, it is a logical necessity.

A 54-Country Architecture Takes Shape

The African NextGen DPI project (formerly Project 54) traces its origins to the 2024 3i Africa Summit and was formalised through a multilateral MoU at the 2025 Inclusive FinTech Forum in Kigali. Its foundation is the bilateral licence passporting agreement between Ghana and Rwanda, where a licensed fintech can now expand into a partner jurisdiction in approximately sixty days. The agreement demonstrates that regulatory alignment at scale is not only theoretically possible; it is already happening.

The architecture is open and non-exclusive. Any African central bank may join as a full participant or observer. The twenty-four-month Phase One roadmap concentrates on regulatory gap assessments, harmonised policy frameworks and technical architecture that holds the promise that all fifty-four African economies can connect. The first step has been taken; the critical variable is now institutional will.

Moving Fast Without Fragmenting

The case for bilateral-first pragmatism is strong. Where regional blocs are moving too slowly, bilateral arrangements are practical way forward. The lesson drawn from long experience with multilateral integration processes is that waiting for full consensus is not a viable strategy. A critical mass of two or three committed central banks moving first, and demonstrating the economic case in practice, is more likely to catalyse broader participation than any top-down coordination effort.

The next best action is not a decision to move bilaterally or multilaterally, but to ensure that early movers build in a way that others can join, rather than locking in architectures that require renegotiation at scale. AfCFTA provides the trade policy framework within which financial integration is at its heart; the payment infrastructure now being built is a key component in what makes that framework economically meaningful.

What Comes Next

The governors gathered at the 3i Africa Summit have already built or nearly completed the build of the domestic infrastructure that financial inclusion demands. What the next chapter requires is different: the willingness to move now even before universal consensus is achieved knowing that action will lead to further action. The rails are being built. The architecture is taking shape. What Africa's financial system now requires is the institutional will, the regulatory convergence and the execution confidence to connect them.