African Payment Systems Link Up
Kenya’s Pesalink and the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) have partnered to streamline cross-border payments. The deal integrates domestic and continental instant payment rails, aiming to dramatically lower costs and bypass traditional reliance on USD correspondent banking.
This integration is a significant step in tackling the high cost of business in Africa, where sending money across borders averages 7-8% of the transaction value, well above the 6-7% global average. Historically, a payment from Kenya to another African country could take three to seven business days to settle, creating major liquidity challenges. The partnership directly supports the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a pact creating a single market of 1.5 billion people with a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion. By enabling direct local currency payments, PAPSS aims to save the continent over $5 billion in transaction costs annually that were previously lost to currency conversions and fees for routing through offshore correspondent banks. Leading the initiative are PAPSS CEO Mike Ogbalu III, a veteran of Interswitch and Verve, and Pesalink CEO Gituku Kirika, who previously served as Director for Digital Payments at Mastercard for Sub-Saharan Africa. The deal makes Pesalink the first national payment switch to serve as a "Technical Connectivity Provider" for PAPSS in Kenya, a pilot model for integrating other domestic systems across the continent. The scale of the integration is substantial. Pesalink processed over KSh 1.1 trillion ($8.53 billion) in 2024 and connects more than 80 Kenyan financial institutions, including banks and fintechs. This network now links into PAPSS, which by late 2025 had expanded to 18 countries, connecting over 150 commercial banks.
