Africa has built some of the most advanced payment rails in the world. Instant payment systems are scaling across the continent. National quick response (QR) code schemes are proliferating. And mobile money now processes more than US$2 trillion annually, growing at over 20% year-on-year, with Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for approximately 60% of global activity (GSMA, 2025). By almost any infrastructure measure, the continent’s payments story is one of remarkable progress.
As Figure 1 shows, global mobile money transaction value has more than doubled since 2018. A trajectory in which Africa has been not a follower but the principal engine. And yet, a critical question remains: are we building payment systems that move money — or economies that create it?
Africa pioneered mobile money. It is now quietly assembling the foundations of one of the most advanced digital payment ecosystems globally. The open question is whether those foundations will translate into broad-based economic participation — into more merchants growing, more small businesses borrowing, and more households building resilience.
The next phase of Africa’s payments evolution will not be defined by infrastructure alone. It will be defined by whether that infrastructure changes how people earn, trade, save, and grow. This article explores why that shift matters, what the most successful systems globally can teach us, and what central banks can practically do to lead it.
From Infrastructure to Utilization
Over the past decade, central banks across Africa and other emerging markets have made bold strides in modernizing payments infrastructure:
- Ghana’s GhQR has enabled interoperable merchant payments at national scale.
- Nigeria, Namibia, and others are advancing instant payment systems.
- The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) is working to resolve the long-standing fragmentation of payments across the continent.
- Globally, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Brazil’s PIX are setting new benchmarks for what coordinated, well-designed public payment infrastructure can achieve.
This shift — from fragmented innovation to coordinated infrastructure — is both necessary and commendable. It reflects a growing recognition that payment systems are public infrastructure, as foundational to a modern economy as roads or power grids. The motivations are sound: reducing the cost of cash, strengthening the transmission of monetary policy, improving the resilience and oversight of money flows, and creating a level playing field on which banks, fintechs, and mobile money providers can compete.
Yet the experience of payment modernization efforts across multiple markets demonstrates an important lesson: infrastructure, while necessary, is not …
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