By: Tewodros Balcha
Ethiopia’s
national payment switch is using a global fintech gathering in Mumbai to
promote the country’s progress in interoperable payments and explore links with
international payment networks, putting its emerging digital infrastructure
into a wider debate over how developing economies can build nationally
controlled but globally connected financial systems.
Abeneazer
Lakew, chief portfolio officer at EthSwitch, is representing the Ethiopian
company at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, where he joined a panel discussion on
digital public infrastructure, according to EthSwitch.
The appearance
comes as India pushes to extend its Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, beyond
its domestic market. Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the Mumbai conference on
Tuesday that India should integrate UPI with more countries’ payment systems,
highlighting lower remittance costs and easier cross-border transactions as
potential benefits. UPI processed 24.51 billion transactions worth about $314
billion in August, according to Reuters.
For Ethiopia,
the discussion has particular relevance.
EthSwitch has
spent the past several years moving beyond the role of a conventional payment
switch toward shared infrastructure linking banks, payment institutions and
other participants in the country’s digital financial system. Its
instant-payment infrastructure, interoperable QR payments and EthioPay national
payment brand form part of that expansion.
The company
said in May that its EthioPay instant-payment service had processed more than 1
million peer-to-peer transactions in a single day, with transaction value
reaching 5.1 billion Ethiopian birr.
That growth
illustrates the shift underway in Ethiopia’s payments market: the policy
challenge is increasingly less about putting individual financial institutions
online and more about ensuring that different providers can transact across a
common set of rails.
That model is
central to the global digital public infrastructure debate, where payments,
digital identity and data exchange are increasingly treated as shared
infrastructure rather than products controlled exclusively by individual
financial institutions.
Global Fintech
Fest, being held in Mumbai from Sept. 8 to 11, has made that issue a central
part of its 2026 programme. Its thematic tracks include digital public
infrastructure, payments and lending, cross-border payments and
interoperability, while the event's broader theme is “Trusted, Connected,
Global Systems for Inclusive Finance.”
EthSwitch's
participation therefore places Ethiopia alongside a broader international
effort to examine whether nationally developed digital infrastructure can be
connected across borders without sacrificing domestic regulatory control.
The distinction
is becoming increasingly important as payment systems become strategic
infrastructure.
India's UPI is
the most prominent example. The system operates in 11 countries and has become
a vehicle for India's efforts to expand its influence in digital payments, with
Modi calling for further international integration this week.
Ethiopia is at
an earlier stage of that process, but EthSwitch has begun positioning itself
for greater international connectivity.
EthSwitch has
also been developing infrastructure for instant payments and interoperable QR
transactions. Its 2023/24 annual report said it had launched an ISO
20022-enabled instant-payment system, while the National Bank of Ethiopia has
mandated interoperable QR standards across banks, payment instrument issuers
and payment-system operators.
The company's
growing transaction volumes provide evidence that the infrastructure is moving
from development into increasingly significant national use.
But the next
test may be international rather than domestic.
For Ethiopia,
the strategic value of interoperability will ultimately depend not only on
whether customers can move money between domestic providers, but on whether the
country's payment infrastructure can connect efficiently and securely to
international systems used for trade, remittances, tourism and digital
commerce.
That makes the
conversations taking place in Mumbai relevant beyond the conference itself.
“Digital public
infrastructure” has increasingly become shorthand for systems that can provide
common digital rails at population scale. India's experience has demonstrated
the potential reach of such infrastructure, while countries across Africa and
other emerging markets are exploring models suited to their own regulatory and
economic conditions.
EthSwitch's
message at Global Fintech Fest is therefore less about adopting an Indian model
wholesale than about positioning Ethiopia within that international
conversation.
The company has
said it wants to expand its role in cross-border payments and serve as a bridge
between Ethiopia's domestic payments ecosystem and the global digital economy.
For
international fintech investors and payment companies, that could make Ethiopia
an increasingly relevant market to watch as its domestic interoperability
infrastructure matures.
The immediate
significance of EthSwitch's Mumbai appearance, however, is representational:
Ethiopia is no longer presenting digital payments solely as a domestic
financial-sector modernization project, but as part of a broader infrastructure
conversation involving interoperability, cross-border connectivity and digital
economic integration.
