24 Feb African Online Payments: Regional Payment Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa
Here is a high level on payment infrastructure in four Sub-Saharan African regions kind courtesy of Cenfri. SADC Payment Systems SADC = Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe The SADC Payment Systems project is to achieve regional financial integration. Interoperability is a priority to bring all member countries and their banks together to share the same platform to facilitate cross-border payments with Real Time Gross Settlement which has been very successful as can be seen from the graph below: East African Community Payment Systems EAC = Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda The East African Payment system in EAC is relatively underdeveloped in comparison to SADC, but can be improved by by simply linking existing RTGS systems to one another to create intra-region payments without creating anything new. See trade volumes in the table below: West African Economic and Monetary Union Payment Systems WAEMU = Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte D'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo The payments infrastructure is across WAEMU is relatively fragmented and government drive for financial inclusion and licensing of MNO’s to provide mobile financial services is catalysing the adoption of mobile money across the region. See graph below: Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) CEMAC = Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo and Equatorial Guinea CEMAC has adopted the franc as a common currency and the financial system is relatively underdeveloped. Mobile money or prepaid cards are used to make electronic payments. In 2017, mobile money accounted for 97% of the e-money transactions. See growth in graph below: Our thanks for inspiration and content to "Payment systems in sub-Saharan Africa – Cenfri | Centre for ...." 21 Dec. 2018, https://cenfri.org/publications/payment-systems-in-sub-saharan-africa/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2020. Services include: THANK YOU - THE TEAM AT AFRICAN PAYMENT SOLUTIONS