The inaugural PAPSS COWRY Lagos 2025 conference opened on Tuesday at the Lagos Continental Hotel with a clear message for the continent’s financial community: Africa is ready to define its payment future.
The event, hosted by the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) under the guidance of Afreximbank, the African Union, and the AfCFTA Secretariat, brought together central bankers, commercial banks, fintech founders, policymakers, and technology operators to discuss the continent’s most ambitious payment modernisation effort yet.
At the heart of the conversation was the role of PAPSS in shaping a borderless African market under the African Continental Free Trade Area.
In his keynote, PAPSS CEO Mike Ogbalu III revisited the historical forces that fragmented Africa’s economies and set the stage for today’s payment challenges. Highlighting the legacy of the 1884 Berlin Conference, he argued that broken borders and currency fragmentation still undermine Africa’s ability to trade with itself. “Africa’s 41 currencies do not speak to one another,” he said, creating a daily barrier for traders across the continent.
Ogbalu framed PAPSS as a long-awaited correction to that fragmentation, noting that early Pan-African leaders had already envisioned the need for an African payment and clearing union as far back as 1963. Today, that vision has taken form.
Since its public debut in January 2022, PAPSS has matured rapidly, now connecting 19 countries, 160 commercial banks, and 15 national switches, allowing cross-border transactions to clear in local currencies within a maximum of 120 seconds.
The platform handles AML checks, sanctions screening, and fraud prevention in real time.
He underlined the practical value for banks, switches, fintechs, and small businesses. Banks see improved margins thanks to processing fees as low as one-tenth of existing alternatives. Tech companies can build in one market and scale across Africa through a single connection.
PAPSS: building Africa’s digital trade rails
The tone deepened when Afreximbank’s Executive Vice President of the Global Trade Bank, Heytham El Maayargi, took the podium. He described PAPSS COWRY as a movement rather than a conference, a rallying point for Africa’s push to build its own digital trade rails.
He stressed that Africa still loses nearly $5 billion annually to third-currency routing, while SMEs struggle with liquidity and settlement challenges that more integrated markets solved long ago.
El Maayargi outlined Afreximbank’s integral role in the payment ecosystem, anchored by a $45 billion balance sheet and relationships with over 300 African banks. PAPSS, he emphasised, is already functioning at scale, supported by Afreximbank’s $3 billion settlement and liquidity facility.
He also previewed upcoming innovations, including the PAPSS Card, which will allow travellers to spend their home currency across Africa without FX spreads or routing through foreign systems. He announced the forthcoming Afreximbank Innovation Lab in Abuja, positioned to incubate AI-powered and trade-tech solutions built atop PAPSS.
The Guest of Honour, Prof. Pius Olanrewaju, President and Chairman of Council at the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, reinforced the urgency of African-owned payment infrastructure.
He argued that Africa cannot achieve monetary stability or meaningful integration while 80 per cent of intra-continental payments rely on non-African currencies. He described PAPSS as the engine powering the AfCFTA’s promise of shared prosperity, reducing delays, costs, and dependency on external intermediaries.
Other speakers, like the AfCFTA Secretary-General, His Excellency Wamkele Mene, agree with Prof. Olanrewaju, posing a fundamental question: “What concerns the dollar with two African countries trading with each other?”
Throughout the event, with several notable speakers and panel discussions, the narrative remained consistent: Africa is designing a continent-wide payment system rooted in its realities and ambitions, not in inherited structures. With PAPSS, the AfCFTA gains the operational backbone it needs to turn policy into trade and trade into prosperity.
The event reached its climax with notable partnerships between PAPSS Card and companies like Pay Altitude, Unify Payment, and Seanfix being signed.
Similarly, the company announced its PAPSS CAWRY Awards, scheduled to be held in 2026, to honour payment companies and ecosystem players across different categories.
For a continent long underserved by global payment networks, PAPSS represents more than infrastructure. It is a statement of intent. Africa is not just participating in the future of payments. It is shaping it.
