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A joint venture between African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (Papss) and Mercury Payment Services, Papsscard is the first Pan-African card scheme and is intended to boost the continent’s financial autonomy.
Introduced at the end of June 2025, Papsscard is intended to enable fast, secure and affordable cross-border retail payments between African markets.
Historically, cross-border payments within Africa have been routed via the global north, which is slow, expensive and entails a loss of data control.
The new initiative aims to change this by processing transactions within the continent, thereby keeping the value, data and economic benefit in Africa.
Afreximbank president and chairman of the board of directors, Professor Benedict Oramah, said that Papsscard is “a transformative step towards strengthening intra-African trade and preserving value within the continent”.
Papsscard takes its identity from Papss, a cross-border, financial market infrastructure enabling payment transactions across Africa.
It connects commercial banks, payment service providers (PSPs) and other financial intermediaries in a number of African jurisdictions and aims to promote the efficient flow of money securely across borders in the region.
A home-grown approach
The majority of African card payments, especially cross-border ones, today go via the big US-based international networks, Visa and Mastercard.
This involves dollar-based clearing, currency conversion and fees, but Papsscard could bypass this system, clearing payments in local currencies and thereby reducing foreign exchange pressure.
Mike Ogbalu III, CEO of Papss, said Papsscard is “a powerful symbol of progress and a bold step towards financial independence”, adding that it reflects Africa’s ability to create practical, home-grown solutions that align with how the continent trades, lives and grows.
Demand for a cheaper alternative to the existing system can be seen not only in the creation of an African card network, but also in the widespread use of cryptocurrencies, especially stablecoins, for cross-border transfers in Africa.
Again seeking quicker, more cost-effective solutions than the traditional banking system that sends payments via the US or former colonial centres in Europe, consumers have been using tools such as USDC to make near-instant cross-border transfers for some time.
Governments in Africa, and in other emerging regions, have generally been pushed to find ways to incentivise the use of local currencies, which may take the form of initiatives such as Papsscard or the creation of regulatory frameworks that can govern the use of crypto rails.
Think local
Payments sovereignty is a recurring theme at the moment, with governments and regulators responding to the uncertain geopolitical climate by considering what might happen to their payments systems in situations that had previously seemed unlikely.
In Sweden, for example, the central bank has focused on the need for security in the context of the perception that the threat from Russia is growing, given multiple recent instances of infrastructure cables on the bed of the Baltic Sea being damaged.
Its response has been to recommend that cash acceptance be mandated and to suggest that card payments should be possible offline.
The EU has focused more on the dominance of the same US-based card networks that currently handle the bulk of African transactions.
Its concerns are twofold. First, it worries that Visa and Mastercard are able to charge excessive fees, given that there is a lack of meaningful competition; second, it would like to see home-grown alternatives, given that the US is an increasingly unreliable partner on the world stage.
The European authorities’ proposed solutions echo those being created in Africa – the bloc is seeking to champion a local alternative to the US card networks, and it is also exploring the use of digital assets, particularly a digital euro.
It remains to be seen whether Papsscard or any of the European alternative approaches prove successful, but it is clear that there is an appetite for moving away from global networks to operate on a more local, regional basis.
