Manufacturers and small businesses are set to benefit from a new era of seamless cross-border payments, thanks to the launch of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System- PAPSS Cowry, a game-changing payment platform.

This cutting-edge platform, backed by Afreximbank, the AU and AfCFTA, and recently launched in Lagos, promises to increase efficiency, reduce costs and boost trade across the continent as it connects 160 banks across 19 countries and positions Africa for a bigger share of its $329 cross-border market.

The platform delivers 120-second local currency settlement, removing USD bottlenecks, cutting FX friction and strengthening the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) driven trade flows.

Mike Ogbalu, CEO of PAPSS, in his keynote address at the platform launch themed ‘Building an Interoperable and Sovereign Africa Payment Ecosystem for Trade and Economic Growth,’ explained that AfCFTA has provided a single market for the continent’s 1.9 billion people that needs a seamless cross-border payment platform to trade.

“We have created it as an ecosystem that will pack all of us together in a way that we are able to empower each other rather than compete,” he said.

“Create a centralised value that everybody can leverage without affecting the individual value proposition of all the entities that leverage this way,” he added.

He stated that the Pan-Africa payment rail has connected 19 countries and plans to expand to 40, adding that 160 leading commercial banks across the continent are connected to the platform.

“We are also now enabling fintech companies across the continent to be able to originate payments in one market and terminate them in another market,” he explained.

“PAPSS is that financial market infrastructure that allows for the processing of cross-border payments in local currencies and is able to do that in no more than 120 seconds,” he added.

He appreciated central banks across the continent for their support, saying that a governance infrastructure has been created to make sure the payment system continues to operate in the right way. He stressed that sovereign payments are critical for the continent’s survival.

Haytham EI Maayerigi, executive vice president – global trade bank, Afreximbank, stressed that African businesses still face real barriers, whose border payments remain slow, expensive, and impossible sometimes, with $5 billion lost yearly to third-currency routing.

He explained that the situation has made it difficult for small businesses to find trusted partners, affordable finance and adequate market information, noting that with AfCFTA advancing, it must be easy for firms to trade with each other.

He said Afrexim, which is a promoter of PAPSS, works daily to remove these obstacles. “Together with AfCTA and the African Union, we are building the institutional foundation of a truly integrated market, supporting a lot of the initiatives.”

“Through advisory, guarantees, certification and project preparation, we mobilise the capital that builds factories, logistic hubs, processing plants, energy systems, the backbone of African industrialisation.”

He stressed that capital alone will not deliver integration and that the African continental trade also needs a digital spine, a system that connects markets, trust, information, logistics, finance and payments.

Experts say Africa requires a better business environment to unleash its potential and drive intra-African trade. The experts noted that the PAPSS Cowry platform will help improve the ease of doing business across the continent.

Wamkele Mene, secretary general, AfCFTA Secretariat, described the platform as a key enabler of AfCFTA, giving its practical effect on the continent’s vision of a fully integrated African market.

“It operationalises financial sovereignty by enabling the seamless flow of funds needed to sustain the world’s largest free trade area, and by reducing the friction that has historically held back intra-Africa trade,” Mene said.

He noted that the continent has 42 currencies, which alone creates structural barriers, saying that when two African traders rely on a third-country currency to trade, the cost of doing business rises sharply.

“Our continent loses an estimated $5billion annually in currency conversion.” PAPSS addresses this bottleneck directly by enabling instant settlement in local currencies and reducing reliance on expensive corresponding banking corridors.”