Banks get better terms when they negotiate together.
AfricaPay Limited is the regional program manager for Africa within the Digital Local Currency group. We govern the Digital Local Currency Programme across the continent, which lets a syndicate of banks pool their collective demand for a currency, contract directly with a single sponsor bank in the destination market, and reach that market’s retail payment infrastructure.
Three things change
Many to one, not one to one. Banks in a market assess their collective demand for a currency and approach the destination as a syndicate. Volume that would be marginal for any single bank becomes worth negotiating over, and the terms are set once for the group.
Direct, not intermediated. The syndicate contracts with the sponsor bank itself. No correspondent chain, and none of the compliance cost each additional hop carries.
Retail, not wholesale. Correspondent relationships move institutional flows. A sponsor bank shares its retail payment infrastructure, so member banks reach domestic mobile money, instant payment and QR rails on the same terms as a resident.
AfricaPay does not contract with banks. The Programme is delivered in each country by a local program provider, established with a qualified local partner. Membership agreements are signed there. Regulated activity, custody of funds and settlement sit with the licensed banks that participate.
What local program providers deliver
Member banks expect more than access. Five capabilities sit inside every market programme, each a condition of the network working rather than an addition to it.
Cross-border regulatory and compliance advisory
Establishing the shared framework that lets two banks in two jurisdictions contract with each other directly.
Read moreLocal-currency treasury matching
Identifying and arranging the counterparty positions that let member banks hold and settle in each other’s currencies.
Read moreInstitutional training and certification
University-accredited programmes for member bank staff, delivered with an education partner.
Read moreNetwork technology assurance
Auditing core banking, switching, card and merchant systems against the throughput standards the network requires.
Read moreProgramme communications
Multilingual publication and localisation, so material developed anywhere in the network reaches each market in its own language.
Read moreWhy Africa
No continent has moved further from cash toward digital retail value, and none has built more of its own infrastructure to do it.
$1.4T
Mobile money in 2025
Africa processed around 1.4 trillion dollars in mobile money value in 2025, roughly two thirds of the global total, across some 92 billion transactions.
1.2B
Registered accounts
About 1.2 billion registered mobile money accounts sat on the continent at the end of 2025, with 347 million active in any 30-day period, more than any other region.
28
Countries reachable through PAPSS
The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System now reaches banks across 28 participating countries, with more than 190 institutions connected.
60%
Still outside formal finance
In Central Africa close to 60% of adults remain outside the formal financial system. Reach is growing quickly, but the digital rails still operate in silos.
Where AfricaPay sits
A governance company, not an operator
AfricaPay holds regional governance and licenses know-how downward to country program managers. It has no external clients and does not enter the funds flow.
Anchored in sovereign currency
The Programme settles in local currency. It introduces no parallel instrument and no claim outside the domestic monetary system of any member state.
Built on existing licences
Every leg of every transaction is performed by a licensed bank under its own permissions and its own supervisor.