How Africa’s fragmented payment systems are holding back cross-border trade

African countries must harmonise regulatory requirements, connect  payment systems and invest in shared financial infrastructure to make cross-border trade faster and cheaper, experts stated at the 2026 Moonshot by TechCabal conference. 

Speaking on a panel  titled, “Commerce Without Borders: Cross-Border Without Friction”, Tola Onayemi, chief executive officer (CEO) of Norebase; Tatiana Ndlovu, executive head of marketing at Nedbank Africa Regions; and Iheakachi Nwabueze, vice-president of global marketing and growth at Grey, said fragmented regulations and disconnected payment systems continue to raise the cost and complexity of doing business across the continent.

Cross-border trade between African countries reached $220.3 billion in 2024, growing 12.4% from the previous year, according to Afreximbank’s African Trade Report 2025.

Yet businesses trading across the continent continue to navigate different currencies, payment systems and regulatory requirements, which can make transactions more expensive and complicated.

The speakers said greater interoperability and less regulatory duplication would help businesses reach more customers across borders.

Onayemi said payment systems across Africa were largely designed around individual countries rather than a connected continental market, creating a sharp contrast between domestic transactions and cross-border payments.

Using Nigeria as an example, he said domestic transfers could be completed within seconds, but that efficiency often broke down when transactions crossed national boundaries.

“Once you start to move that from outside one jurisdiction to the other, that interoperability breaks apart,” he said.

He argued that connecting existing payment infrastructure, rather than repeatedly building separate systems, could help reduce the cost of moving money across the continent.

“If we own that layer, what it means is that we’re able to set a lot more of the pricing and the cost,” Onayemi said.

He called for a shared infrastructure that would enable  financial institutions and payment providers to connect their services while continuing to serve their customers.

He cited Nigeria’s domestic payment infrastructure as an example of how providers could offer services through a common underlying system instead of independently recreating the same capabilities.

Such an approach, he said, could reduce duplication and help lower the cost of cross-border transactions.

Onayemi also identified regulatory fragmentation as a barrier to expansion.

He explained that a financial technology company seeking to operate in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana could need separate licences and funds held locally in each market to facilitate payments.

The requirement to maintain funds in multiple countries, he said, adds to the complexity of settling transactions and reconciling balances.

He said fragmented corporate and administrative requirements make it harder for businesses to expand across African markets.

For merchants, the challenge extends beyond accepting payments to receiving funds, settling transactions and arranging the logistics needed to deliver goods across borders.

Ndlovu believes the solutions must also account for customers’ expectations, arguing that people should have the same confidence when buying goods and services across borders as they do in their domestic markets.

Customers need to know the price of a product, whether a supplier can be trusted, when an order will arrive and what recourse is available if a transaction goes wrong, she said.

“The reality is that the same empathy design principles that you apply on local products, you should absolutely be able to apply cross border,” Ndlovu said.