By:
Nana Appiah Acquaye
Onafriq
Nigeria Payments Ltd has partnered with the Pan-African Payment and Settlement
System (PAPSS) to launch the continent’s first wallet-based outbound payments
pilot from Nigeria to Ghana, enabling instant cross-border transfers fully in
naira without reliance on hard currency conversion. The pilot, approved by the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), is being implemented in collaboration with banks
and mobile money operators.
The
six-month pilot, which becomes fully operational from December 1, is designed
to facilitate intra-African payments for individuals, merchants and traders. It
is expected to particularly benefit small and medium-sized enterprises by
providing a faster and more affordable way to transact across borders, helping
businesses expand their markets and improve trade efficiency.
The
initiative supports the operationalisation of the African Continental Free
Trade Area (AfCFTA) mandate by reducing payment barriers within the region.
Under the partnership, Onafriq provides mobile money rails across an ecosystem
of more than one billion mobile wallets, while PAPSS contributes a network of
over 160 commercial banks, representing more than 400 million bank accounts
across 19 African countries. The collaboration aims to bridge mobile money and
banking systems, enabling smoother cross-border transactions.
Africa’s
payments landscape has historically been divided between bank-led and
mobile-led markets, often limiting interoperability. The Onafriq–PAPSS
partnership seeks to remove these siloes and enable cross-border collaboration
at scale, leveraging over one billion mobile wallets and approximately 500
million bank wallets across the continent.
The
pilot builds on an earlier partnership between Onafriq and PAPSS for inbound
payments into Ghana announced earlier this year, as well as the successful
Ghana-to-Nigeria instant payments corridor launched in 2025.
Mxolisi
Msutwana, Managing Director for Anglophone West Africa at Onafriq, said the
collaboration demonstrates how large-scale partnerships can unlock seamless and
secure connections between banking systems and mobile money ecosystems, opening
bi-directional trade corridors and reducing costs for African businesses.
Ositadimma
Ugwu, Chief Information Officer at PAPSS, said the pilot challenges the
perception of borders as barriers by enabling Nigerians to send value across
borders with ease, advancing the vision of borderless payments across Africa.
