Onafriq, a Pan Africa payments company, has partnered with the Pan-African Payments Settlement System (PAPSS) to help with intra-trade across the region.
Details
At the event, Dare Okoudjou (CEO of Onafriq), Mike Ogbalu (CEO of PAPSS), and Ike Aneson (Country Director of Onafriq for Gambia and Ghana) were present to discuss the partnership and its benefits for cross-border payments in West Africa and the continent as a whole.
At the event, it was announced that Morocco had recently signed on to the PAPSS network, raising the total of African countries on the platform to 17.
Background
Launched by Afreximbank in collaboration with the African Union in 2019, the system has reduced the time it takes to make cross-border payments and transactions from days to just minutes.
The system was developed in response to the challenges faced by corporations and conglomerates operating across multiple African countries, arising from currency incompatibilities and reliance on hard currencies.
Live Demo of Cross Border Payment
At the event, there was a demonstration of how the system works in real-time. Users on the MTN platform can dial *170# on their mobile devices, select “Money Transfer”, select Cross Border transfer, and select Onafriq as the payment provider to begin the process.
A live payment was sent to a wallet in Nigeria. The payment was done in Cedis, and the receiver got the amount in their local currency of the Naira.
Countries currently integrated into the PAPSS system include Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, The Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Djibouti.
