A coordinated bloc of Kenyan banks has just launched the most direct assault on M-Pesa's domestic dominance yet, aggressively slashing fees on the PesaLink network. Elsewhere, Nigeria is moving to formalize its crypto oversight with a new Virtual Asset Council, and a major Angolan bank is linking directly into China's yuan settlement network.
Nineteen Kenyan banks and microfinance institutions have officially implemented the steep fee cuts to the PesaLink network we noted recently, making transfers up to KES 1,000 free and capping larger transfers at KES 20. The new wrinkle in this direct challenge to M-Pesa is a planned PesaLink rebrand, which will allow transfers using just a phone number or national ID to simplify the user experience.
Why it matters
This aggressive price war by the Kenya Bankers Association marks the most direct challenge to M-Pesa's long-held dominance. For payment gateways, this signals a potentially significant shift in consumer and business payment behavior toward cheaper bank-to-bank transfers for higher-value transactions. This will necessitate optimizing PesaLink integrations to offer merchants a competitive, low-cost payment acceptance option, as the battle for Kenya's payment rails intensifies.
Safaricom on Wednesday rolled out a new privacy feature for M-Pesa that masks the sender's full phone number in person-to-person transfer notifications. The recipient will now see a partially obscured number along with the sender's registered first and last name. Senders can grant consent for their full number to be revealed if requested by the recipient.
Why it matters
This is a significant 'privacy by design' shift from Kenya's dominant payment platform, addressing long-standing user concerns about data exposure and unsolicited contact. For merchants and payment gateways, this change means that customer phone numbers can no longer be automatically harvested from M-Pesa notifications, potentially impacting CRM, post-transaction communication, and any workflows that relied on this data. It signals a move towards more secure and privacy-centric data handling in payment APIs.
Pepkor Holdings announced on Wednesday it is merging its fintech subsidiary Flash with competitor Shop2Shop to form a new entity, FintechCo, with an implied valuation of R21.3 billion. Pepkor will own a 57.1% controlling stake in the combined platform, which aims to become one of South Africa's largest merchant commerce and payment providers focused on the informal economy.
Why it matters
This merger represents a major consolidation in the South African fintech landscape, creating a dominant player targeting the crucial informal merchant sector. For a B2B payment gateway, this fundamentally alters the competitive environment, concentrating market power and creating a formidable, vertically-integrated competitor offering everything from cash handling to digital acquiring.
Angola's Banco de Fomento Angola (BFA) announced on Wednesday it plans to become the first bank in the country to join China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) by next year. The move is part of a broader trend across Africa to settle more trade with China directly in yuan, aiming to bypass the US dollar, reduce transaction costs, and increase settlement efficiency.
Why it matters
The direct integration of a major African bank into China's CIPS network is a concrete step in diversifying cross-border settlement rails away from a dollar-centric system. This development creates an alternative channel for forex repatriation and trade finance, potentially lowering costs and simplifying transactions for African merchants who source goods from or sell into China. It’s a key indicator of the changing geopolitics of payment infrastructure.
At a media event on Wednesday, Nigerian fintech giant OPay detailed its multi-layered, AI-powered security architecture designed to combat escalating digital fraud. The system includes an 'Anti-Scam Shield,' a 'Large Transaction Shield,' a 'Night Guard' feature to flag unusual nocturnal activity, and an 'Emergency Lock.' These tools use behavioral analytics and real-time monitoring to proactively protect its user base.
Why it matters
OPay's public detailing of its fraud-fighting toolkit provides a concrete case study of production-grade AI deployment in a key African market. For a payment gateway, these specific features—like time-of-day risk analysis and velocity checks—offer a valuable blueprint for the types of merchant-facing and internal risk controls needed to secure transactions and build trust in a high-growth, high-risk environment like Nigeria.
Visa on Thursday announced a new suite of AI-powered tools aimed at streamlining the credit card dispute process, which handled 106 million cases in 2025. The tools include a generative AI solution for merchants to automate the collection of dispute evidence and predictive models for issuers and acquirers to identify and resolve potential disputes before they are formally filed by providing customers with more granular transaction details.
Why it matters
As a dominant card network, Visa's investment in AI for dispute automation sets a new industry standard. This is directly relevant to any payment processor's bottom line, as it promises to reduce the significant operational costs and manual effort associated with managing chargebacks. For merchants, it could mean faster dispute resolution and fewer lost sales, improving cash flow and customer relations.
Following up on the executive order signed on July 17, Nigeria is officially establishing its first coordinated regulatory framework for virtual assets. The order creates an inter-agency Virtual Asset Council, chaired by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to harmonize regulation, supervision, and taxation. The council is tasked with clarifying jurisdictional roles among agencies and will oversee a regulatory sandbox for new crypto products.
Why it matters
This move signals a major policy shift from Nigeria's previously adversarial stance towards crypto, providing a clear path toward regulatory certainty. For payment providers and merchants, the creation of a formal, CBN-led council and sandbox could finally unlock the potential for licensed, regulated crypto payment rails in Africa's largest market, reducing ambiguity and fostering a more stable environment for adoption. This is a foundational step towards integrating digital assets into the formal economy.
A new report from BVNK and YouGov reveals that businesses and individuals in Nigeria and South Africa are leading the world in adopting stablecoins for practical financial utility, rather than speculation. They are used to bypass traditional banking inefficiencies, hedge against local currency devaluation, and reduce cross-border transaction costs by up to 80% compared to SWIFT transfers.
Why it matters
This report provides strong empirical evidence that stablecoins are already functioning as a de facto payment and settlement rail in Africa's key markets. For a payment gateway, this confirms that there is existing, organic merchant and consumer demand for stablecoin-based solutions to solve concrete problems like forex volatility and high transaction fees, validating the business case for integrating digital asset infrastructure.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced on Wednesday it has extended the deadline for financial institutions and payment service providers to implement geo-fencing for their Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals to August 1, 2026. The mandate requires that all PoS terminals be geographically fixed to their registered locations to curb fraud and improve oversight of electronic payment channels.
Why it matters
While offering a brief reprieve, this deadline extension highlights the CBN's determination to enforce stricter controls on Nigeria's payments landscape. For acquirers and payment providers, compliance is non-negotiable and represents an increasing operational and technical burden. This is part of a broader regulatory push in Nigeria to tighten security and formalize the rapidly growing digital payments ecosystem.
Ripple has acquired an equity stake in African payments giant Flutterwave, valuing the company at $3.3 billion. As part of the deal, Flutterwave will integrate Ripple's new stablecoin, RLUSD, along with Ripple Payments and the XRP Ledger, to facilitate faster and more cost-effective cross-border transactions, particularly for remittances.
Why it matters
This is a significant strategic move by a major competitor, combining a capital investment with a deep technical integration. The partnership leverages stablecoin infrastructure to directly attack the high costs and slow speeds of traditional cross-border payments in Africa. For African Payment Solutions, this intensifies the competitive pressure and underscores the strategic necessity of having a clear stablecoin and alternative rail strategy to compete with heavily capitalized players like Flutterwave.
In a tax law update highlighted Wednesday, Djibouti has introduced a new remittance tax and a digital supervision platform for all outbound international transfers. This move is part of a broader trend of African nations tightening regulations on cross-border financial flows. The same regional tax brief noted that Botswana has increased its corporate and individual income tax rates.
Why it matters
Djibouti's new tax and digital supervision platform for remittances is a clear signal of increasing regulatory scrutiny over cross-border payments, even in smaller African markets. For any pan-African payment provider, this underscores the growing complexity and cost of compliance, as more jurisdictions implement specific rules and monitoring systems for forex flows, directly impacting settlement costs and operational processes.
Kenya's Banks Launch Coordinated Attack on M-Pesa In a major strategic shift, nineteen Kenyan banks have drastically cut fees on the PesaLink interbank transfer network, with some transfers now free. This coordinated move directly targets M-Pesa's long-held dominance in the digital payments market, aiming to shift transaction volume back to traditional banking rails.
Nigeria and South Africa Formalize Digital Asset Oversight Both of Africa's largest economies are moving to bring digital assets into the regulatory fold. South Africa's tax authority (SARS) has issued draft rules treating crypto as taxable intangible assets. Simultaneously, Nigeria's new Virtual Asset Council, established by executive order on July 17, begins its work to coordinate national crypto regulation and taxation.
Stablecoins Increasingly Used as Utility for Cross-Border Settlement Fintechs across Africa are pragmatically adopting stablecoins as a backend settlement utility to bypass inefficient traditional correspondent banking. A new report highlights significant adoption in Nigeria and South Africa for forex hedging, while a partnership between Ripple and Flutterwave will integrate a stablecoin for remittance corridors.
The AI Fraud Arms Race Intensifies As AI-driven fraud becomes more sophisticated, major payment players and fintechs are responding with their own advanced AI defenses. Visa announced new tools to automate dispute resolution, OPay detailed its AI-powered security suite in Nigeria, and a new study provided empirical evidence that converging fraud and cyber teams significantly cuts chargeback rates.
Cross-Border Payment Rails Diversify The infrastructure for moving money across African borders is becoming more diverse. Angola's largest private bank plans to join China's CIPS network to facilitate Yuan-based trade settlement, reducing reliance on the US dollar. At the same time, the AfCFTA is moving to operationalize the PAPSS network for local currency settlement.
What to Expect
2026-07-23—South African Reserve Bank (SARB) announces its interest rate decision.
2026-08-01—New deadline for Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminal geo-fencing enforcement in Nigeria.
2026-08-11—South African Reserve Bank (SARB) implements updated Balance of Payments (BoP) reporting codes.
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