The continuing growth of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System
Two years ago in January, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) was officially launched by Afreximbank and the African Union. Two years later, the real-time gross settlement infrastructure continues to grow as new participants come online.
Designed to provide instant or near-instant cross-border payments between countries in Africa, PAPSS was launched to simplify cross-border transactions for businesses and consumers on the continent.
Its purported benefits include increased transparency, improved working capital and increased cross-border trade, with the number of organisations participating in the system having grown steadily since launch. In May 2024, PAPSS CEO Mike Ogbalu III reported that PAPSS was “making rapid progress”, saying that more than 115 commercial banks had connected, with the same number again “in the pipeline for connection”.
However, while the number of businesses and individuals able to access PAPSS is at an all-time-high, there is still far more room for its development. Though 15 central banks are now signed on to PAPSS, up from 13 in May 2024, the organisation’s latest list of live commercial banks, released in January, shows the system currently has live commercial banks in only 12 countries, with four more – Tunisia, Comoros, Uganda and Egypt – in the onboarding process.
New announcements are frequent, however. Last week, Kenya’s KCB Group and Rwanda’s Bank of Kigali both announced that they had gone live on PAPSS, allowing customers to send and receive cross-border payments using the system, with Ogbalu saying the move would “unlock new opportunities for trade and investment, allowing African SMEs to access broader markets and contribute to local economies”.
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