Leading African payments gateway Onafriq and the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) are preparing to scale their cross-border payment platform beyond its Ghana–Nigeria pilot, with broader expansion subject to regulatory approval from the Bank of Ghana.
According to them, “At this stage, the initiative has moved beyond the initial testing phase and is supporting live cross-border payments under the BoG sandbox, while broader scale-up remains subject to full regulatory approval.”
“Once full regulatory approval has been obtained from Bank of Ghana, the next frontier for Onafriq is to take the Ghana–Nigeria model and replicate it across West, East, Southern and Central Africa, allowing businesses and individuals to make instant cross-border payments in local currencies without having to route transactions through hard currencies,” the company said in a written response to a questionnaire from Techfocus24.
The story so far
In July 2025, the two entities launched the Ghana side of the programme; a six-month pilot focusing on transfers from Ghana in cedis, which were settled in Nigeria in nairawithout the sender having to convert to dollars or any other hard currency.
The pilot was subsequently extended by the Bank of Ghana to allow the parties to assess how the service performed in areas such as transaction activity, customer adoption, operational efficiency and foreign-exchange settlement. It also provided an opportunity to test how a local-currency-based cross-border payment service could work in a real market environment.
Then in January 2026, they expanded the corridor to support payments from Nigeria to Ghana. This allowed Nigerian customers and businesses to also initiate payments in Naira, with the Ghanaian recipient receiving the equivalent value in Ghana cedis, without the sender having to first convert the Naira into US dollars or another hard currency.
This effectively established the foundation for a two-way Ghana–Nigeria payment corridor, making it easier for individuals and businesses in both countries to move money across the border.
“We are seeing encouraging adoption, but the channel is still at the scale-up stage. The significance is not just the volume today; it is that we have demonstrated that bank-to-wallet, wallet-to-bank and local-currency cross-border payments can work across the Ghana–Nigeria corridor,” the company said.
Main use cases
According to them, the strongest opportunity is broader than conventional remittances, saying that the main use cases are SME and merchant payments, merchant collections, supplier payments, person-to-person (P2P) transfers as well as bank-to-wallet and wallet-to-bank transfers.
SME and merchant payments
The most strategically important use case, according to Onafriq, is the SME and merchant payments, particularly for businesses engaged in import/export, wholesale and distribution, retail, fashion and textiles, agricultural products, spare parts, digital services, professional services, e-commerce, as well as beauty and personal-care products.
Speaking of beauty and personal-care products, Ghanaian manufacturer and exporter of household, beauty and personal-care products, Amanex Company Limited, told Techfocus24 that it introduced its clients in Nigeria to the Onafriq-PAPSS platform and some of them use the channel in making payments.
Another use case particularly valuable for SMEs is supplier payments, because businesses can pay suppliers across the border without having to establish complicated international banking arrangements.
Merchant collections and P2P transfers
The platform has made it possible for a Ghanaian merchant selling to Nigerian customers, for instance, to receive payments directly into a bank account or mobile wallet rather than requiring the customer to use dollars, cash or expensive an international payment service.
The infrastructure also supports individuals sending money to family and friends, although the strategic value of the corridor goes beyond remittances.
Bank-to-wallet and wallet-to-bank
Perhaps what makes the Onafriq-PAPSS partnership particularly powerful is the fact that it allows interoperability between bank accounts and mobile money wallets. This means users are able to make bank-to-wallet as well as wallet-to-bank transfers across borders, without using the dollar as a reference point.
The company said the 2026 Nigeria–Ghana pilot was specifically designed to bridge banking and mobile-money ecosystems. In that regard, Onafriq brings access to its large mobile-money ecosystem, while PAPSS connects into the African banking infrastructure. PAPSS now connects 28 African countries, with more than 190 commercial banks and fintechs and 16 switches, while its extended network reaches more than 250 additional financial institutions.
By combining PAPSS’s cross-border payment infrastructure with Onafriq’s extensive network of banks, mobile-money providers and wallets, the service can connect different types of financial accounts and allow money to move seamlessly between them.
For example, a customer could send money from a bank account to a mobile wallet, from a mobile wallet to a bank account, or directly between two mobile wallets, as well as between two bank accounts. All of this can be done without the usually expensive dollarization of the transaction.
“This broader connectivity is particularly important in Africa, where many individuals and SMEs rely on mobile money rather than traditional bank accounts, making cross-border payments more accessible to a much larger segment of the population,” the company said. “That dramatically expands the addressable market.”
Competitive transaction fees
According to the company, structurally, the Onafriq-PAPSS channel offers a more competitive cost structure than traditional cross-border payment models in terms of transaction fees, because PAPSS removes some of the historical layers that make cross-border payments in Africa expensive.
Traditionally, an African business making a cross-border payment may have to deal with: Local currency → USD/other hard currency → correspondent banking → destination currency.
But PAPSS allows the payment to move between African markets using local currencies, supported by Afreximbank settlement model. This does more than eliminate the usually expensive conversion through hard currencies; it also reduces correspondent banking costs, settlement delays, liquidity requirements and operational complexity.
PAPSS explicitly positions the system as a lower-cost alternative designed to reduce the cost and complexity of African cross-border payments.
“The competitiveness is not only about the headline transaction fee. The bigger advantage is the lower total cost of the transaction — from eliminating hard-currency conversion to reducing intermediary layersand providing local-currency settlement. That makes the proposition particularly attractive for SMEs that are sensitive to both fees and FX spreads,” the company said.
Inclusivity — bringing the informal economy into the digital economy
Ultimately, the biggest opportunity is to move beyond bank-to-bank payments.
In that respect, Onafriq said their role is to bridge the different financial ecosystems that exist across Africa, connecting banks and mobile-money wallets so that customers do not need to be in the same type of financial network to transact across borders.
This means a customer can send funds from a bank account to another bank account, from a bank account to a mobile wallet, from a mobile wallet to a bank account, or directly from one mobile wallet to another.
By connecting these different channels to the PAPSS infrastructure, Onafriq can make cross-border payments more accessible to SMEs, informal traders, individuals and businesses, including customers who may not have access to traditional international banking services
So far, the service has addressed several of the biggest obstacles facing SMEs in Ghana and Nigeria, anddemonstrates the potential to deliver similar benefits to SMEs across the continent..
Impact so far
This far, the service addresses several of the biggest obstacles SMEs in Ghana and Nigeria faces, and therefore promises to provide same value for SMEs across the continent.
Before Onafriq/PAPSS: Cross-border payments often require an SME to first source foreign currency, typically US dollars, before making the payment to an overseas supplier. The transaction may then pass through one or more intermediaries or correspondent banking arrangements before reaching the beneficiary. This usually introduces additional FX costs, transaction fees, settlement delays and reconciliation challenges, making relatively small cross-border transactions more expensive and cumbersome for SMEs.
With Onafriq/PAPSS: The process is significantly simplified. The sender can initiate the payment in their local currency, with PAPSS providing the infrastructure to validate and route the transaction across the participating payment networks. The recipient receives the funds in their local currency, without the sender having to independently source a hard currency such as US dollars or navigate multiple intermediaries. This creates a faster, simpler and potentially more cost-efficient way for SMEs to pay suppliers and customers across African markets. PAPSS states that instant payments can be processed within approximately 120 seconds, while the system performs validation and compliance checks within the payment flow.
The potential SME impact is therefore significant: Faster payments to suppliers, reduced dependence on foreign exchange, lower working-capital requirements, less cash handling, greater certainty of payment, the ability to transact digitally rather than carry cash, access to customers in other markets, better transaction records and greater formalisation of informal cross-border trade.
In 2025, Onafriq deliberately positioned the Ghana programme around bringing informal cross-border transactions into formal payment channels, while the 2026 pilot was specifically launched to allow individuals, merchants and traders to make seamless payments. The aim was to position the service as a mechanism for helping SMEs reach customers and suppliers across the border
“The early impact is best measured by removing friction rather than simply by transaction volume. Every SME that can pay a supplier instantly in local currency, without first sourcing dollars, has effectively gained working-capital efficiency and access to a wider market,” Onafriq explained.
The next frontier
As stated earlier, the Ghana–Nigeria corridor is effectively a proof of concept for a much larger pan-African payment network. PAPSS brings 28 African countries, 190 commercial banks and fintechs and 16 switches to the table. Its extended network also reaches more than 250 additional financial institutions.
What is now left is full regulatory approval from Bank of Ghana, and the next frontier for Onafriq will be to take the Ghana–Nigeria model and replicate it across West, East, Southern and Central Africa, allowing businesses and individuals to make instant cross-border payments in local currencies without having to route transactions through hard currencies.
Once the path is cleared, Onafriq will connect its extensive African wallet, bank and payment network to PAPSS, and create multiple African trade corridors rather than a single bilateral corridor.
What’s more, as more countries and financial institutions join PAPSS, the network can evolve from individual bilateral corridors into an interconnected Pan-African payment ecosystem, enabling businesses and individuals to make faster, safer and more affordable cross-border payments in local currencies across the continent.
“This is particularly significant following the July 2026 entry of BEAC, which brings the six CEMAC markets into the PAPSS ecosystem and provides an important bridge into Central Africa,” the latter noted.
Making African trade cheaper
According to them, following the expansion, the next frontier would be reducing the total cost of cross-border commerce, not simply the transaction fee, but also foreign exchange conversion costs, correspondent banking costs, as well as liquidity, settlement and cash-management costs.
The ability to transact directly in African currencies is central to this proposition. PAPSS specifically aims to reduce the historical dependence on hard currencies for intra-African payments.
Speed and Safety
PAPSS already targets near-instant payments, with transactions processed within a maximum of approximately 120 seconds. The objective is to make a cross-border African payment feel no different from a domestic payment.
But as volumes increase, the network must ensure that speed does not come at the expense of security. The partners have implemented intelligent risk management strategies to ensure safety on the platform.
PAPSS already incorporates compliance checks into the transaction flow and describes its infrastructure as incorporating cybersecurity, payment-fraud systems,
TV real-time AML/KYC checks, fraud detection, behavioural analytics, machine learning, sanctions screening, strong customer authentication and real-time transaction monitoring to tighten security within the ecosystem.
