Accra: Chief Executive Officer of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), Mike Ogbalu III, has announced an ambitious goal to handle 80% of Africa's commercial payments through PAPSS within the next five years. This announcement comes on the heels of the platform's impressive 2,000% growth and expansion into 20 countries.
According to Ghana Web, during a discussion on the AfCFTA podcast, Ogbalu disclosed that PAPSS currently links 160 of Africa's largest commercial banks and 14 payment switches across the continent. Additionally, two major Francophone central banks are expected to join by the end of 2025, expanding the network to include 14 more countries.
The PAPSS CEO highlighted that this expansion is a significant step toward achieving continental coverage, marking a swift progression from the pilot phase initiated three years ago in six West African Monetary Zone countries. Ogbalu described the current phase as a period of acceleration, likening the development of PAPSS to "building a car and driving it at the same time."
A pivotal achievement of the payment system is its ability to facilitate instant cross-border transactions, which historically took days to complete. The system also offers lower fees compared to traditional banking methods. Ogbalu provided an example of a trader traveling from Nigeria to Dakar, who now completes payments in about seven seconds using PAPSS, alleviating the need to carry large sums of cash and enabling more efficient inventory management.
Ogbalu III emphasized PAPSS's capability to process cross-border payments with full regulatory compliance in just seven seconds, challenging other global payment systems to match this efficiency. He underscored the importance of the system as a tool for economic sovereignty for Africa, noting that despite Africa's significant resources, intra-African trade remains low compared to global standards.
The CEO illustrated the challenges within the cocoa value chain, where African countries capture only a small fraction of the product's value, while global multinationals claim a substantial share. He warned against Africa's trade reliance on external payment systems and promoted PAPSS as a solution, governed by African central banks to ensure control over trade decisions.
The current PAPSS network includes countries across all five African regions, with participation from Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in West Africa; Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi in Southern Africa; Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Djibouti, and Uganda in East Africa; and Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco in North Africa.