For four years, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) has been building the plumbing for a more connected African economy. Since launching in January 2022, the payment network says it currently connects 30 African countries, 24 central banks, about 200 financial institutions and more than 16 payment switches.
Cross-border payments that once took three to five days to clear now settle in an average of seven seconds, within the 120-second guarantee the system was designed to meet, according to PAPSS. PAPSS also says it has reduced the cost of cross-border money transfers by up to 95%, while transaction volumes have grown by more than 1,000% over the past year.
PAPSS was launched by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) in partnership with the African Union and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as a continent-wide payment infrastructure for African trade. If African countries were to trade more with one another, they would need a payment system that could move money between them without routing every transaction through financial infrastructure outside the continent.
The problem lies within a larger gap: intra-African trade accounted for just 14.4% of Africa’s total trade in 2024, while Sub-Saharan Africa was the most expensive region for sending remittances, with the average cost reaching 8.45% in Q1 2025.
Originally published by TechCabal.