Ghana, Rwanda, and Zambia are testing a unified digital trade corridor that allows cross-border payments to move instantly across African financial systems. The shift reflects a broader continental push to reduce reliance on external banking intermediaries and build interoperable, Africa-owned financial infrastructure under the African Continental Free Trade Area.
“Economic sovereignty in the twenty-first century is inseparable from digital sovereignty,” said Ghana’s Vice-President Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang during the 3i Africa Summit in Accra on May 6, where the pilot project was officially unveiled.
Strategic economic architecture
The remarks capture a growing policy shift across African financial systems, where governments are increasingly treating payments infrastructure as strategic economic architecture rather than a back-office banking function.
For years, businesses moving money across African borders have depended on correspondent banking systems routed through financial centres outside the continent. A fabric trader in Kumasi selling products to Kigali or Lusaka could face several days of delays, multiple currency conversions, and transaction charges that significantly reduced already-thin profit margins.
The new Ghana-led pilot seeks to remove those frictions entirely by enabling direct settlement between local currencies through interoperable payment systems connected under a shared digital framework.
Pan-African Payment and Settlement System
Announced during the three-day summit in Accra, the project is being integrated with the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), the African Union-backed payment rail designed to reduce dependence on dollar-mediated transactions and external correspondent banking systems.
Afreximbank data shows PAPSS already connects at least 17 African countries, 14 national switches, and more than 150 commercial banks, enabling near real-time settlement without routing transactions through third-party currencies. The system allows payments in local currencies while clearing centrally, reducing exposure to foreign exchange volatility and settlement delays.
Cost of moving money across African borders
At the centre of the shift is the cost of moving money across African borders. According to the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide database, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world’s most expensive region for cross-border transfers, with average remittance costs standing at 8.46%, while bank-led transfers can approach 15%.
The new corridor is designed to address those inefficiencies while supporting intra-African trade, which policymakers increasingly view as central to the success of the African Continental Free Trade Area.
Quest to boost intra-African trade
According to the latest Afreximbank trade outlook, total African trade reached approximately $1.4-trillion in 2025, with intra-African trade accounting for about 18% of total flows, or nearly $250-billion.
The African Continental Free Trade Area has been designed to expand that figure, but its success depends heavily on whether payments, identity, and compliance systems can function seamlessly across borders.
The pilot corridor integrates four core pillars, payments, digital identity, regulation, and infrastructure interoperability. The framework is also aligned with the African Union’s Digital Trade Protocol, which seeks to establish common rules around digital commerce, data governance, and cross-border interoperability.
Digital identity systems
A key component of the project is the use of national digital identity systems such as Ghana Card as a model for cross-border verification, allowing faster Know Your Customer checks between participating countries.
World Bank estimates show that nearly 470 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa still lack formal identification, limiting access to banking services, credit, and digital commerce. Policymakers increasingly see interoperable identity systems as both a trade facilitation tool and a financial inclusion mechanism.
The pilot also reflects a broader wave of regulatory alignment emerging across the continent. In East Africa, regulators are increasingly moving beyond basic mobile money interoperability toward harmonised licensing and compliance systems.
Licence passporting framework
In March 2026, the Central Bank of Kenya and the National Bank of Rwanda signed a memorandum of understanding establishing a licence passporting framework that allows payment service providers licensed in one country to operate in the other without duplicating approvals.
The framework, aligned with the East African Community Cross-Border Payment System Masterplan, is intended to reduce regulatory fragmentation while allowing fintech companies to scale services such as remittances, merchant payments, and digital wallets across borders.
Other African markets are also adopting ISO 20022 messaging standards to improve compatibility between payment systems and enable instant cross-border communication between financial institutions.
For small and medium-sized enterprises, which dominate African trade flows, the implications are immediate. Businesses trading regionally often struggle with delays in foreign exchange sourcing, high settlement costs, and fragmented compliance requirements.
Removing the ‘dollar hurdle’
The corridor aims to remove what policymakers describe as the “dollar hurdle,” allowing businesses to invoice and settle transactions directly in Ghanaian cedis, Rwandan francs, or Zambian kwacha without relying on intermediary currencies.
The next phase of the pilot will test mobile money interoperability to ensure informal and unbanked traders can also participate in the system. Africa’s mobile money ecosystem has become one of the world’s largest digital finance markets, processing more than $2-trillion in transactions annually according to GSMA estimates.
Clara Arthur, CEO of Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems, has previously argued that interoperable infrastructure will be critical to scaling Africa’s digital payments ecosystem.
The broader ambition behind the Ghana-Rwanda-Zambia corridor is to create what policymakers increasingly describe as a single African digital market, where trade is supported by interoperable financial rails designed, governed, and settled within the continent itself.
- Ghana, Rwanda, and Zambia are piloting a unified digital trade corridor enabling instant cross-border payments in local currencies to reduce reliance on external banking intermediaries.
- The corridor is integrated with the African Union-backed Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), allowing real-time settlement and reducing transaction costs and delays.
- The initiative addresses the high costs of cross-border transfers in Sub-Saharan Africa, which average 8.46%, aiming to boost intra-African trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area.
- Key project pillars include payments, digital identity, regulatory alignment, and infrastructure interoperability, with national digital IDs facilitating faster cross-border verification.
- Future phases will test mobile money interoperability to include informal and unbanked traders, supporting the vision of a single African digital market governed and settled within the continent.
