Today on The Settlement Layer: Direct access to South Africa's national payment rails could soon extend beyond traditional banks. The central bank's Prudential Authority is actively pushing to let retailers and telcos onto the system, a move that would fundamentally alter ZAR settlement mechanics and break the longstanding sponsorship model. We also dig into the specific attack vectors driving the 2.54% AI fraud rate currently hammering the continent's digital merchants, and track a new bilateral linkage between Rwanda and Tanzania.
Fundi Tshazibana, CEO of South Africa's Prudential Authority, announced on Saturday that the central bank is actively working to modernize the National Payments System to allow non-bank entities, such as retailers and telcos, to operate without requiring a sponsoring bank. The proposed amendments, published in May, are facing some pushback from incumbent banks but aim to foster greater competition and innovation while ensuring customer safeguards are in place.
Why it matters
This is a potentially seismic shift in the structure of South Africa's payment ecosystem. Granting non-banks direct access to the national payment rails could dismantle the current bank-led sponsorship model, opening the door for new payment providers and business models. For a payment gateway, this is a critical development to watch as it could fundamentally alter ZAR settlement mechanics, reduce dependency on traditional banking partners, and introduce new compliance and capital requirement frameworks.
An analysis on Friday from Wesley Fetter, an OLP Product Manager at Ecentric, frames the evolution of South Africa's online payments in four distinct eras: QR codes, the controversial screen-scraping Instant EFTs, the move to direct bank APIs, and the emergence of device-native wallets. The piece highlights the South African Reserve Bank's regulatory pressure against screen-scraping methods, which has accelerated the industry's shift toward more secure, API-driven solutions like PayShap.
Why it matters
This provides essential context for the current state of South African payment rails. The clear trend away from screen-scraping toward direct API integration, driven by SARB's risk concerns, is a crucial dynamic for any payment gateway's product roadmap. It confirms that the future of instant bank payments in SA lies with official, bank-sanctioned APIs, making integrations with systems like PayShap table stakes for long-term viability.
In Nigeria's digital economy, algorithms are increasingly central to financial decisions, from credit scoring to fraud detection. While these AI-powered systems are credited with expanding financial inclusion, a TechCabal analysis from Friday highlights a growing accountability crisis. When algorithms make incorrect or biased decisions, customers often lack transparency or clear channels for redress, creating significant risk for both consumers and the fintechs deploying the models.
Why it matters
This is a critical regulatory and reputational risk for the entire Nigerian fintech ecosystem. While the efficiency gains from AI are clear, the lack of a framework for algorithmic accountability is a looming crisis. For a payment gateway, this signals a clear need for transparent, explainable, and auditable AI systems, especially in fraud detection and merchant risk profiling, to avoid getting caught in a future regulatory crackdown and to maintain merchant trust.
A case study released on Friday by Moniepoint Inc. details how its real-time digital infrastructure has transformed Nigeria's food service industry, a market that reached $11.09 billion in 2025. The company's platform solved persistent issues like settlement delays and unreliable payment confirmations, leading to a 2,823% increase in terminal usage by Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) and providing merchants with instant access to funds and embedded lending.
Why it matters
This case study provides a tactical blueprint for how targeted payment solutions can unlock growth in specific merchant verticals. For African Payment Solutions, Moniepoint’s success demonstrates the immense value of solving core operational pain points—settlement speed, reliability, and access to working capital—rather than just processing transactions. It’s a powerful proof point for the 'platform-as-a-service' model in the Nigerian market.
As the AI-driven fraud arms race we've been tracking intensifies, financial firms are facing stark new projections. According to reports on Friday, Deloitte now estimates that AI-enabled crime could cause US banking fraud losses to surge from $12.3 billion in 2023 to $40 billion by 2027. The growing sophistication of synthetic identities—a trend we've seen increasingly overwhelming African payment rails—is rendering traditional, rule-based systems completely insufficient.
Why it matters
The scale of this forecast underscores that AI-driven fraud is not an incremental threat but a categorical one requiring a new defensive paradigm. For a payment provider, this means the budget for 'fraud and risk' is now a budget for competitive AI capabilities. Simply blocking known bad actors is no longer enough; the new baseline is a multi-layered approach combining identity verification, biometrics, behavioral analytics, and continuous risk assessment to combat threats that are themselves learning and adapting.
Building on the recent Sumsub data we highlighted—which pegged Africa's overall fraud rate at a global high of 2.54%—a deeper analysis released Friday specifies the exact mechanics driving the surge in the iGaming sector. The fraud is overwhelmingly identity misuse, where criminals deploy AI tools to leverage genuine credentials obtained from data breaches, bypassing standard document checks. Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Malawi, and the DRC are identified as the top hotspots.
Why it matters
This is a critical signal for any online merchant category in Africa, not just iGaming. The shift in fraud typology from creating fake documents to misusing real, stolen identities at scale is a significant tactical evolution. It renders simple document verification (KYC) insufficient and demands more sophisticated, layered defenses that incorporate device intelligence, behavioral biometrics, and transaction pattern analysis to detect anomalous use of otherwise valid credentials.
Accrue, a fintech company, launched Accrue Business on Friday, a banking platform designed for African SMEs that uses stablecoins for cross-border payments. The platform enables businesses to hold, send, and receive stablecoins, collect international payments, and pay suppliers. The model bypasses traditional banking intermediaries by leveraging the company's existing network of agents in 15 African countries to facilitate cash-in and cash-out operations.
Why it matters
This is a direct, infrastructure-level challenge to traditional cross-border B2B payments. By building its own settlement and liquidity network on top of stablecoin rails and a physical agent network, Accrue is demonstrating a viable model for serving SMEs that are poorly served by the correspondent banking system. This is a clear signal of crypto moving from a speculative asset to practical B2B payment infrastructure in Africa.
In a report highlighted on Friday, USDC-issuer Circle argues that African countries with established mobile money regulations are uniquely well-positioned to oversee stablecoins. The company suggests that regulated stablecoins are a natural evolution of existing electronic money systems, pointing to the success of M-Pesa in Kenya as a model for how digital value can be managed within a clear regulatory perimeter.
Why it matters
This is a strategic lobbying effort by a major stablecoin issuer to frame the regulatory conversation in Africa. By aligning stablecoins with the well-understood and successful mobile money model, Circle is attempting to de-risk its product in the eyes of regulators and accelerate adoption. For payment providers, this approach could pave the way for clearer regulations and a faster path to integrating stablecoin settlement into existing payment flows.
Ahead of the July 31 Safaricom shareholder vote we've been tracking, new details clarify the proposed governance changes stemming from Vodacom's majority stake acquisition. Shareholders will vote on amending the articles of association to explicitly require consent from the Kenyan government—which holds a 20% stake—for any strategic expansion into new markets beyond Kenya and Ethiopia.
Why it matters
This move could significantly constrain the expansion of M-Pesa, one of Africa's most successful mobile money platforms. Adding a government approval layer to market entry decisions could slow down the pace of innovation and cross-border integration. For any fintech relying on or looking to partner with M-Pesa for pan-African payment services, this introduces a new political risk factor that could impact future strategic planning and market access.
Morocco's central bank, Bank Al-Maghrib, has implemented a 0.15% cap on electronic payment fees for small retailers and e-government services, it was reported Saturday. The policy is a direct intervention aimed at accelerating digital payment adoption among micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) that are currently heavily reliant on cash.
Why it matters
This is a significant regulatory signal. While interchange regulation is common in developed markets, its application in an emerging market specifically to boost SME digitization is noteworthy. This move could serve as a blueprint for other African governments looking to accelerate their digital transformation agendas, potentially altering the economics of payment acceptance for small merchants across the region.
The UK government has formally designated Amazon Web Services (AWS), along with Microsoft, Google Cloud, and Oracle, as a 'critical third-party' provider to its financial sector. The move, reported Friday, places these cloud giants under direct regulatory oversight by UK financial authorities to manage systemic risks from potential outages or cyberattacks.
Why it matters
This is a landmark shift in financial regulation that directly impacts cloud infrastructure partners like AWS. While this is a UK rule, it sets a global precedent. For African Payment Solutions, which relies on AWS, this signals a future of increased compliance and resilience requirements being passed down from cloud providers. The era of cloud as unregulated utility is over; it is now considered core financial infrastructure, with all the regulatory scrutiny that entails.
Rwanda and Tanzania are moving forward with a Proof of Concept (PoC) to interconnect their national instant payment systems—Tanzania's TIPS and Rwanda's RSwitch. The initiative, announced Friday, aims to enable seamless, real-time cross-border payments between the two East African Community (EAC) members, directly addressing the high costs and slow speeds of intra-regional transfers.
Why it matters
This bilateral linkage is a significant, practical step toward achieving the goals of pan-African payment interoperability, in contrast to the slower, more political progress of continent-wide systems. If successful, this direct switch-to-switch model provides a scalable template for regional integration that could be replicated across other EAC states, creating more efficient corridors for cross-border e-commerce settlement.
South Africa Signals Major Overhaul of Payments System The Prudential Authority is moving to allow non-bank entities like retailers and telcos direct access to the National Payments System, a fundamental change that could reshape competition and settlement mechanics for ZAR payments. This is coupled with an ongoing review of the legacy instant EFT model.
Accountability Becomes a Flashpoint for AI in African Fintech As Nigerian fintechs like OPay heavily promote their AI-driven models for credit and fraud, the question of algorithmic accountability is becoming a central concern for regulators and users. This debate is now sharpened by reports that AI-assisted identity fraud is surging across the continent.
AI-Enabled Fraud Demands New Architectures A wave of reports and warnings from vendors and regulators underscores that the fraud landscape has fundamentally changed. Sophisticated attacks using AI, including synthetic identities and deepfakes, are forcing a shift from traditional security to layered, AI-driven defense models built around verifying authenticity.
Stablecoin Rails Gain Traction for B2B Payments Fintechs like Accrue are launching new business banking platforms built entirely on stablecoin rails to solve cross-border payment friction for SMEs. This trend, bypassing traditional banking intermediaries, demonstrates a maturing market for crypto as a practical B2B settlement layer.
Morocco's Fee Cap Signals Pro-Digitization Regulatory Stance In a move to accelerate digital adoption, Morocco's central bank has capped electronic payment fees for small businesses at 0.15%. This type of direct regulatory intervention to lower barriers could provide a model for other African nations looking to reduce cash dependency.
What to Expect
2026-10-15—The 12th annual Blockchain Africa Conference (BAC26) will be held in Johannesburg, focusing on market infrastructure, regulation, and institutional adoption of digital assets.
2026-07-31—Safaricom shareholders are set to vote on governance reforms, including a proposal requiring government approval for expansion beyond Kenya and Ethiopia.
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