PAPSSCARD is a joint venture between Afreximbank, PAPSS, and Mercury Payment Services.
The PAPSSCARD card scheme has officially launched in Africa. The continent’s first Pan-African card scheme was unveiled late last month at Afreximbank Annual Meetings in Abuja, Nigeria, and is designed to enable cross-border retail payments across Africa without reliance on external payment systems.
PAPSSCARD is a joint venture between the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), and Mercury Payment Services (MPS). According to a joint statement, the launch marks “a major leap in Africa’s efforts to achieve financial sovereignty by building resilient and independent payment systems, easing people travel and boosting trade integration”.
Issuing entities include Bank of Kigali, I&M Bank Rwanda, Unified Payments in Nigeria, and RSwitch, the national e-payment switch in Rwanda, with continent-wide adoption and rollout to be led by “African central banks and payment systems”.
In comments, Benedict Oramah, president and chairman of Afreximbank, says PAPSSCARD “empowers us to move money swiftly, securely, and affordably across our borders”, easing Africa’s historic reliance on external payment systems that, according to Oramah, has “impeded trade, increased costs, and compromised control over our financial data”.
John Bosco Sebabi has been appointed as acting CEO of PAPSSCARD, stating that the card scheme is intended to “reduce costs for public institutions, support innovation across the financial sector, and expand access to secure, modern payment tools for people and businesses across the continent”.
Founding entity PAPSS, launched in 2022 by the African Union and Afreximbank, offers real-time gross settlement (RTGS) infrastructure for Pan-African cross-border payments, and currently operates the PAPSS Instant Payment System (IPS) and PAPSS African Currency Marketplace (PACM) alongside PAPSSCARD.
Source: https://www.fintechfutures.com/
