The continent
African rails
Domestic schemes, regional switches and a continental clearing system built to keep African payments inside Africa.
A corridor is designed against the rails that already exist in the destination market. Which switch a sponsor bank sits behind, which scheme it settles in, and which clearing system the corridor routes through determine what is possible and what a central bank will accept.
Africa’s position is distinctive. Retail value sits substantially in mobile money rather than in bank accounts, and the continent has built its own clearing infrastructure specifically to avoid routing intra-African payments through banks outside the continent.
National and regional rails
Nigeria
Verve · AfriGo · NIBSS NIP
Domestic card schemes and instant payments
Verve is Africa’s largest home-grown card scheme, run by Interswitch. AfriGo is the Central Bank of Nigeria’s own domestic scheme, created to compete with the international networks on cost. NIBSS Instant Payments is the interbank rail behind both.
Ghana
GhIPSS Instant Pay · GhanaPay · gh-QR
Interbank rail, bank wallet and universal QR
GhIPSS, wholly owned by the Bank of Ghana, operates the instant interbank rail, the GH-Link card switch and the gh-QR standard, which carries both bank and mobile money flows. GhanaPay is the bank consortium’s wallet.
Kenya
PesaLink · M-Pesa
Bank instant network and mobile money
PesaLink is Kenya’s de facto instant payment network and became a PAPSS technical connectivity provider in February 2026, linking more than 80 network participants to the PAPSS bank population.
CEMAC
GIMACPAY
Regional switch for Central Africa
GIMACPAY connects banks, microfinance institutions, mobile operators and fintechs across the Central African monetary union. The Bank of Central African States joined PAPSS in July 2026, covering its six member states.
Southern and East Africa
SADC-RTGS · EAPS · REPSS
Sub-regional settlement platforms
The SADC real-time gross settlement system, the East African Payment System and the COMESA Regional Payment and Settlement System each clear within their own bloc. Their limited interoperability is precisely the gap a corridor has to be designed around.
Francophone West Africa
GIM-UEMOA
Regional switch for the CFA franc zone
The regional interbank switch for the West African monetary union, operating across eight member states under BCEAO supervision, with a single currency shared across the bloc.
Continental and cross-border
Continental clearing
PAPSS
The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, launched by Afreximbank with the African Union and the AfCFTA Secretariat. It settles cross-border payments in local African currencies without routing through correspondent banks outside the continent, and now reaches banks in 28 countries with over 190 institutions connected.
Arab region link
PAPSS and BUNA
A memorandum between PAPSS and BUNA, the Arab Monetary Fund’s multi-currency system, opens a path between the African and Arab clearing networks. For corridors between the two regions this is the settlement layer to design against.
Mobile money
The dominant retail layer
Africa processed roughly two thirds of global mobile money value in 2025. In several markets the wallet, not the bank account, is where retail value actually sits, which changes what reaching a market’s retail infrastructure means in practice.
How this informs advisory work
Advisory work translates a member bank’s intent into a specific corridor design: which switch to integrate with, which scheme to settle in, which clearing system to route through, and how the sanctions, anti-money-laundering and data-localisation position is documented for both supervisors.
AfricaPay does not operate any of these systems, hold membership in them, or settle across them. They are the environment a corridor is designed for.