For decades a payment from Lagos to Nairobi routed through a dollar and a correspondent bank in New York or London. PAPSS is the African Union’s answer: settle intra-African trade instantly, in local currencies, on infrastructure owned by Afreximbank and the continent’s central banks.
A continental rail that settles African trade in African currencies, so the dollar stops being the obligatory go-between.
The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) is a continental financial-market infrastructure for cross-border payments, launched commercially in January 2022 by the African Union and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank). It is the payments backbone of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The problem it attacks is specific. Intra-African payments have historically been routed offshore and converted through US dollars, adding cost, delay and a dependency on correspondent banks that periodically de-risk African flows. PAPSS lets a payer send in their local currency and a beneficiary receive in theirs, with the currency leg handled on the continent — cutting the dollar out of the middle.
A payer instructs in their own currency through their bank or payment provider. PAPSS routes the instruction, the beneficiary is paid in their local currency — typically near-instantly — and the cross-currency obligations between participants are netted and settled multilaterally once a day, before midnight, through participating central banks. The end-user sees an instant payment; the FX and settlement happen behind the curtain.
The payer’s and beneficiary’s currencies are both African. PAPSS removes the forced USD round-trip and the FX spread it carries.
Multilateral netting before settlement collapses many gross flows into small net positions — reducing the foreign-exchange and liquidity each central bank must hold.
Settlement runs through participating central banks, which is what makes it final and trusted rather than a private workaround.
By late 2025 PAPSS spanned roughly 19 countries across all four African regions, with 150-plus commercial banks and a growing set of payment switches — plus PAPSSCARD and the African Currency Marketplace (PACM) layered on top.
PAPSS is wholesale cross-border plumbing for trade. It complements domestic instant rails and mobile money; it does not replace them.
| Dimension | Old correspondent model | PAPSS |
|---|---|---|
| Currency path | Local → USD → local | Local → local |
| Speed | Days, via offshore correspondents | Near-instant to the beneficiary |
| Dependency | Offshore banks that can de-risk | Continental infra + central banks |
| FX cost | Double conversion + spread | Single managed FX leg, netted |
| What it is not | — | A retail wallet, a CBDC, or a replacement for domestic instant rails |
Open above; the corridor economics are for members.
PAPSS is most compelling where you currently eat a double FX conversion and correspondent delay on intra-African corridors — trade payments, B2B, remittance aggregation. The reach is uneven, so the honest move is corridor-by-corridor: confirm both legs are live participants before you promise a customer instant local-currency settlement.
Connect through a participating bank or switch rather than rebuilding correspondent relationships you can retire. But do not over-promise coverage — PAPSS is strong on some corridors and absent on others, and a few high-value corridors still settle faster bilaterally. Map your actual volume to live corridors first.
Marketing “pay anywhere in Africa instantly” on a network that covers ~19 countries unevenly is a promise you will break. Sell the corridors that are actually live.