....And your wallet is about to notice
Africa stopped paying Western banks $5 billion a year to move our own money. Here's what that means for your next transaction.
DECODE DAILY - WEDNESDAY EDITION
November 6, 2025
The Hook
Remember the last time you sent money to family in another African country? Your ₦50,000 somehow became ₦35,000 by the time it arrived. You called the bank. They explained: conversion fees, correspondent banking charges, intermediary costs. Translation: Lagos and Accra can't talk directly, so your money had to stop in London first.
You paid ₦15,000 just to move your own money 500 kilometers.
Welcome to the old system. Expensive. Slow. Built for a world where African cities needed Western permission to talk to each other.
Not anymore.
The Gist
Africa just launched its own payment highway, and it's bypassing the toll booths in New York and London entirely.
The system is called PAPSS (Pan-African Payment and Settlement System). Ignore the acronym. Just know this: for the first time, African banks can send money directly to each other without routing through Western intermediaries.
Think of it like the MTN moment. For years, calling Ghana from Nigeria meant your call bounced off a European satellite. Expensive. Ridiculous. Then MTN built towers in both countries and said, "Let's just connect directly." Boom, cheaper calls.
That just happened to money.
Here's what went live:
19 countries are already connected: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, Rwanda, and others. Even North Africa just joined—Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia. 30+ countries expected by 2026. That's basically the entire continent saying, "We're done paying London to move our own money."
Three things just changed:
- Your money stays in Africa. No more Lagos → London → Nairobi detours.
- A new card network (PAPSSCARD) that competes with Visa and Mastercard, keeping fees here instead of sending them abroad.
- Direct currency swaps. Naira to shillings without converting to dollars first. (Yes, that was the old system. As pointless as it sounds.)
Why It Matters to You
Let's get specific. Here's what this means for your actual wallet.
If you send money home every month:
The old way:
Send ₦50,000 from Lagos to Accra.
Fees: 5-10% (₦2,500-₦5,000).
Your family receives: ₦45,000-₦47,500.
The new way:
Same ₦50,000.
Fees: 1-3% (₦500-₦1,500).
Your family receives: ₦48,500-₦49,500.
You just saved ₦3,500 every single month. Over a year? That's ₦42,000 you keep instead of giving to Western Union or MoneyGram.
If you run a business that imports/exports across Africa:
You know the pain. You order goods from Accra and the payment process is:
- Convert naira to dollars (fee #1)
- Send dollars to correspondent bank in New York (fee #2)
- Convert dollars to cedis (fee #3)
- Wait 3-5 days while your supplier waits and your goods sit
Total fees: 10-15% of payment value.
New system:
Pay directly in naira. Your supplier's bank in Accra receives cedis. Same day. Fees: 1-3%.
Your margins just improved by 7-12%.
On ₦1 million in annual cross-border payments? You just saved ₦70,000-₦120,000. That's profit that didn't exist before.
If you're a freelancer getting paid from another African country:
Before: Kenyan client pays you KES 100,000. Bank converts to USD, then to NGN. You lose 7-10% in the process. You receive ₦90,000-₦93,000.
Now: Direct KES to NGN conversion. You receive ₦97,000-₦99,000.
You just got a 7% raise without negotiating anything.
If you're in tech, fintech, or e-commerce:
This is your moment. Every payment app, every e-commerce platform, every fintech startup now needs to integrate PAPSS. That means:
- Developer jobs (API integration)
- Product manager roles (building user flows)
- Business development opportunities (onboarding merchants)
Learn how this system works, and you just became more valuable. This is infrastructure hiring.
The Deep Dive: What Actually Changed?
For decades, here's how African money moved:
The Old Correspondent Banking System:
Nigerian bank → US correspondent bank (Bank of America, Citibank) → Ghanaian bank.
Why? Because Nigerian and Ghanaian banks didn't trust each other's currencies or compliance systems. So they used American banks as middlemen. Those middlemen charged rent. Lots of it.
Total cost to Africa: $5 billion annually. Just to move money between ourselves.
Here's the absurdity: To convert naira to Kenyan shillings, you had to go naira → dollars → shillings. Even though neither Nigeria nor Kenya uses dollars. It's like needing English to translate Yoruba to Swahili. Expensive. Pointless.
What PAPSS does differently:
It's a central clearing system. Think of it as a Pan-African switchboard where all the banks connect directly.
When you send ₦100,000 from Lagos to Nairobi:
- Your Nigerian bank debits your naira account
- PAPSS converts naira to shillings at market rate (no dollar detour)
- The Kenyan bank credits your recipient's account in shillings
- Settlement happens same-day between central banks
No London. No New York. No correspondent fees.
Real-world impact already visible:
Between 2022 and 2023, international airlines had $846 million trapped across African countries because they couldn’t convert their earnings.
Nigeria alone accounted for almost $700 million of that (IATA data).
Now, with PAPSS enabling direct local currency settlements, that money is finally moving again, no dollars, no detours, no middlemen.
Trade between African countries was stuck at 15% of total African trade (compared to 60%+ intra-regional trade in Europe and Asia). One major reason was that moving money was too expensive.
That barrier just dropped.
The Opportunity Frame
If you're an entrepreneur:
Cross-border African business just got 10% more profitable overnight. That Ghanaian supplier you couldn't afford? Recalculate. That Kenyan market you thought was too expensive to enter? Run the numbers again.
If you're in fintech:
Every payment app needs PAPSS integration. Every merchant platform needs to educate users. There's a land grab happening. Get certified, get trained, get positioning.
If you work in banking or finance:
Your bank is integrating this whether you know it or not. Be the person who understands how. That's job security.
If you're choosing where to invest:
Intra-African trade is about to grow. Logistics companies, payment processors, cross-border e-commerce, freight forwarders—those sectors just got more interesting.
Read. Reflect. Rethink.
For decades, we paid Western banks $5 billion annually. Not for infrastructure. Not for innovation. Just... rent. For permission to move our own money between our own countries.
We built the roads. We have the banks. We have the currencies. But somehow, we needed London's approval to connect Lagos to Nairobi.
That permission just expired.
This isn't just about cheaper fees (though yes, save that ₦42,000 yearly). It's about what happens when infrastructure serves the people using it instead of extracting from them.
Maybe the real question isn't how much we'll save. It's how much we've been losing, and why we accepted it for so long.
Your Move
This week:
Call your bank. Ask if they've integrated PAPSS. Ask when cross-border fees will drop. Competition should force prices down, make sure you're getting the savings.
If you do business across African borders:
Recalculate your margins with 1-3% transaction costs instead of 10-15%. That's real money. Adjust your pricing, expand your supplier options, enter markets you thought were too expensive.
If you're in tech:
Learn the PAPSS API. Understand the settlement flows. This is infrastructure, and infrastructure knowledge creates careers.
THIS IS PART OF WEDNESDAY'S EDITION
This week's theme: Africa is rewiring itself
→ Story 1 (you just read): Africa fired the expensive payment middleman, your cross-border costs just dropped 80%
→ Story 2 Five Countries Are Winning Africa’s Trade Race (And It’s Not Who You Think)
→ Story 3 AI Just Became 42% of Global Trade Growth (And Africa’s Missing the Boom)
💬 HAVE YOUR TRANSACTION FEES DROPPED YET?
Are you in one of the 19 connected countries? Have you noticed cheaper transfers? Or is your bank still charging the old rates?
Reply to this email or leave a comment. We read every response.
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Decode Daily is Africa's smartest read for next-gen professionals. We simplify business, economy, and culture—connecting the dots between what's happening and what it means for you.
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The Decode Daily Team
SOURCES & READ MORE 📚
African Export-Import Bank: PAPSS Official Launch Announcement
Reuters: Africa Launches Pan-African Payment System
Bloomberg: African Airlines Unlock $846M in Trapped Funds
Business Day: How PAPSS Changes Cross-Border Trade
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