Kenya's detailed new draft payment systems bill sets aggressive capital floors and mandatory open-banking rules for the East African market. Meanwhile, the institutionalization of South African crypto rails advances with a fully backed rand stablecoin launching on Circle's Arc network.
Following closely on the heels of Supercoin's ZARsc deployment we covered yesterday, BlockTower launched its own FSCA-licensed rand stablecoin, ZAR Universal (ZARU), on Tuesday, September 22. Debuting on Circle's Arc blockchain and as a founding currency pair on Circle StableFX, ZARU is 100% backed by onshore rand reserves managed by Sanlam Specialised Asset Management and held at Standard Bank. The protocol executes 24/7 ZARU/USDC trades via an atomic Request-for-Quote (RFQ) engine to remove correspondent banking time windows, with Luno acting as the primary liquidity venue and Lesaka evaluating point-of-sale integration.
Why it matters
The deployment of a regulated, 100% reserve-backed rand token directly on institutional on-chain foreign exchange rails establishes a compliant mechanism for instant ZAR/USDC liquidity conversion. For payment gateways and cross-border acquirers, atomic settlement eliminates the 24-to-48-hour counterparty risks associated with traditional banking rails, allowing immediate treasury rebalancing. As Lesaka explores POS usage, this bridge could allow multinational merchants selling into South Africa to bypass legacy card schemes and settle directly into stablecoins.
African payment provider Daya integrated the Sui blockchain on Tuesday, September 22, to power backend stablecoin settlement across Daya Business, Daya Pro, and its developer APIs in Nigeria. The deployment utilizes Sui's sponsored transaction framework to enable gasless transfers for end users, eliminating the need for merchants or corporate treasuries to hold native SUI tokens for network execution fees. Daya and the Sui Foundation plan to extend the gasless settlement model to South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya.
Why it matters
Requiring merchants to maintain native gas tokens (like ETH or SOL) creates operational friction for corporate finance teams handling stablecoin transactions. By using protocol-level fee sponsorship to abstract gas fees entirely, Daya allows merchants to settle USDC/USDT directly into local bank rails without managing cryptocurrency gas balances. This fee abstraction lowers operational complexity for B2B payment gateways embedding stablecoins as backend settlement rails.
Cryptocurrency exchange Luno acquired GTXN on Tuesday, September 22. GTXN is a Kenyan cross-border payments provider and Capital Markets Authority-licensed fund manager founded by Dan Kleinbaum. The deal integrates GTXN's collection and payout rails directly into Luno's institutional settlement business unit to bypass traditional correspondent banking chains across East Africa, following Luno's admission into the Central Bank of Nigeria's regulatory sandbox.
Why it matters
Owning a CMA-licensed cross-border entity in Kenya gives Luno direct, compliant access to local fiat payout channels and fund management structures without relying on third-party aggregators. This acquisition strengthens on-chain to off-chain fiat settlement across East Africa, giving regional stablecoin providers dedicated local rails. Gateways competing for cross-border merchant settlement face tighter spreads as crypto platforms institutionalize their own local banking access.
Building on the joint Know-Your-Agent framework it introduced with major card schemes earlier this month, Ant International released a suite of enterprise payment AI upgrades on Tuesday, September 22. The rollout across its Alipay+, Antom, and WorldFirst brands features the Antom 3-in-1 Transformer foundation model, the FalconTST liquidity forecasting engine, and the Account for Agent (AFA) protocol. To secure non-human payment execution, Ant introduced AgentSafePay, a two-layered authorization architecture built for autonomous software agents.
Why it matters
Ant International's release provides concrete production specifications for processing autonomous agentic payments across cross-border merchant corridors. By embedding dedicated risk models and fund-guarantee protocols directly into the gateway layer, the architecture addresses the risk of authorization disputes and prompt-injection fraud during agentic checkouts. For B2B gateways integrating cross-border Asian trade rails, these protocols establish early benchmarks for managing machine-to-machine treasury, FX, and account permissioning.
Razorpay launched Razorpay Vulcan on Wednesday, September 23, a transformer-based AI foundation model built on NVIDIA GPUs and AWS infrastructure. The model was trained on 3 trillion data points across 4 billion historic transactions. Operating as a unified intelligence layer, Vulcan executes real-time dynamic transaction routing, cross-border card fraud mitigation, and failure prediction, which Razorpay reports improves overall payment success rates by 8% to 10%.
Why it matters
The deployment of deep-learning foundation models trained on trillions of transaction signals reflects a clear shift away from static rule-based fraud and routing scripts in payment processing. By evaluating browser, authorization, and network signals simultaneously, foundation models achieve measurable increases in checkout success rates. For technical payments teams, adopting similar domain-specific models is becoming necessary to optimize conversion on international card checkouts.
GoCardless completed the UK's first live agentic account-to-account transaction on Tuesday, September 22, processing a recurring Direct Debit donation for charity Trussell via a conversational AI chat interface. Conducted under the Financial Conduct Authority's AI Live Testing programme, the checkout utilized an AI agent to present contribution tiers, collect customer bank details, and establish a bank mandate without redirecting the user to external web forms.
Why it matters
Executing live account-to-account payments inside a conversational AI session moves agentic commerce out of isolated sandbox pilots into regulated production environments. Using Direct Debit bank rails rather than card networks demonstrates how native account-to-account infrastructure can support autonomous AI workflows while maintaining explicit user spending mandates. Payment gateway operators can use these testing precedents to design consent-based APIs for non-human checkout agents.
Following up on the initial publication of the draft National Payment System Bill 2026 we covered yesterday, detailed provisions reveal strict new tiered licensing and mandatory open finance data-sharing. The legislation introduces a Sh250 million capital floor for Electronic Money Issuers like M-Pesa, Sh50 million for card schemes, Sh30 million for remitters, and Sh10 million for payment gateways. It also creates non-funded Payment Initiation (PISP) and Account Information (AISP) licenses with a Sh5 million capital entry point, with public comments open through October 9, 2026.
Why it matters
Building on the initial bill draft published earlier this week, this detailed framework transforms open finance from a voluntary corporate strategy into an explicit statutory requirement across East Africa. Mandatory API data-sharing and PISP licensing break down M-Pesa's historical wallet lock-in, enabling third-party gateways to initiate bank and wallet payments directly without paying proprietary aggregator toll fees. However, the Sh10 million minimum capital floor for payment gateways increases balance sheet pressure on bootstrapped processors operating in Kenya.
Continuing the steady FX reserve growth we've tracked, Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Olayemi Cardoso announced on Tuesday, September 22, that gross external reserves climbed from the $54.28 billion level we noted earlier this month to reach an 18-year high of $55.25 billion. Concurrently, the CBN reduced its benchmark Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) by 350 basis points from 26.5% to 23%, while narrowing the standing facility corridor and maintaining the Cash Reserve Ratio at 45%.
Why it matters
A $55.25 billion external reserve buffer provides the CBN with expanded liquidity to back its unified foreign exchange window and clear pending commercial dollar demands. For cross-border payment gateways and foreign merchants selling into Nigeria, increased reserve backing stabilizes Naira exchange rates and improves foreign exchange repatriation timelines. The rate cut to 23% also reduces overnight borrowing costs for commercial banks, lowering local working capital costs.
Disclosures from Tanzania's Fair Competition Commission on Tuesday, September 22, revealed that KCB Group has acquired a 22.23% minority stake in East African payment gateway Pesapal. The filing noted that Pesapal owed KCB KES 1.2 billion ($9.27 million) at the end of December 2025. The transaction grants KCB indirect joint control over Pesapal Tanzania as the bank scales its digital merchant footprint across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Zambia.
Why it matters
Traditional East African banking giants are increasingly acquiring direct equity stakes in independent payment gateways to capture point-of-sale and online checkout telemetry. For independent gateways, competing against bank-backed acquiring networks increases margin pressure on standard processing fees. However, bank-fintech equity ties also establish direct pathways for regional acquirers to offer collateral-free merchant cash advances and working capital loans backed by real-time transaction telemetry.
Expanding the direct African CIPS integrations we've tracked with Stanbic Bank, Bank of Kigali formally joined China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System as a direct participant. Becoming the first bank in Rwanda and Central Africa to connect directly to the switch, the agreement enables direct clearing and settlement of renminbi-denominated trade transactions for Rwandan importers, bypassing Western correspondent intermediaries across a corridor representing 26.7% of Rwanda's imports.
Why it matters
Direct integration into CIPS removes Western correspondent banking legs and USD conversion markups for African merchants importing goods from China. Bypassing double FX conversions (RWF to USD to RMB) cuts settlement fees and reduces clearance delays from days to minutes. Gateways handling B2B merchant trade can leverage direct RMB clearing channels to streamline supplier payouts for regional importers.
Following INTERPOL's recent assessment of regional cybercrime, a new report by accounting firm Kreston Pedabo on Tuesday, September 22, estimates cumulative African cybercrime losses at $3 billion since 2019. The study details tightening regional regulatory responses, including the Central Bank of Nigeria's Cybersecurity Self-Assessment Tool and the Bank of Ghana's Cyber and Information Security Directive 2026, which mandate zero-trust architecture, strict third-party vendor audits, and accelerated breach notification windows.
Why it matters
Escalating cybercrime losses and active enforcement of central bank security directives increase regulatory compliance overhead for West African payment processors. Regulators in Nigeria and Ghana are actively penalizing payment institutions that fail to maintain rigorous third-party vendor oversight and continuous vulnerability monitoring. Payment acquirers must embed automated identity verification and zero-trust controls across their API endpoints to mitigate fraud liability.
The Association of South African Payment Providers (ASAPP) presented cost-of-payment research and formal proposals to the South African Reserve Bank's Interchange Determination Project on Tuesday, September 22. The filings urge the SARB to open PayShap merchant acquiring to non-bank payment service providers and leverage existing retail terminal infrastructure. ASAPP's submission aims to lower card interchange fees and expand low-cost instant EFT adoption among informal and SME merchants.
Why it matters
Interchange restructuring and instant payment acquiring rules directly determine the profit margins for gateways operating in South Africa. If the SARB adopts ASAPP's proposals to allow non-bank processors direct acquiring access to PayShap, payment gateways can bypass traditional bank card rails and cut merchant processing costs. Lowering instant EFT clearing friction strengthens alternative payment methods against established card scheme networks.
Statutory Open Finance Codes Shift Network Control from Wallets to APIs Kenya's new draft payment bill follows regional efforts to mandate interoperability and open finance data-sharing. By creating non-funded PISP and AISP license tiers, central banks are stripping closed-loop mobile operators of their traditional data monopolies and turning settlement access into a regulated utility.
On-Chain FX Protocols Target Interbank Correspondent Friction Institutional rand stablecoins launching directly on specialized networks like Circle's Arc signal a shift from retail crypto off-ramps to 24/7 atomic foreign exchange execution. By pairing regulated local fiat reserves with USDC via Request-for-Quote engines, operators are targeting the high settlement latency and fees of legacy correspondent banking.
Commercial Banks Buy Directly into Merchant Point-of-Sale Infrastructure Tier-one regional banks like KCB are securing minority equity stakes in cross-border payment gateways rather than relying on internal software builds. Holding direct equity in merchant software ecosystems gives lenders access to non-interest transaction revenue and real-time merchant collection telemetry for cash-flow underwriting.
Agentic Commerce Protocol Standards Standardize Around Tokenized Execution Layers Global payment networks and enterprise providers are deploying dedicated foundation models and protocol standards—such as Ant International's Account for Agent protocol—to handle machine-to-machine checkout. Standardizing non-human intent verification is becoming essential for processing agentic transactions without triggering elevated risk controls.
Onshore Data Mandates Catalyze Domestic Cloud Infrastructure Investments Incoming central bank data localization rules, such as Nigeria's January 2027 deadline, are accelerating domestic hyperscale data center expansion. Payment gateways and acquirers are forced to transition core database topologies to local facilities to satisfy regulatory residency requirements while maintaining sub-second processing latencies.
What to Expect
2026-09-30—Public consultation deadline for South Africa's FSCA and National Treasury proposed Crypto Assets Manual.
2026-10-01—Central Bank of Brazil Resolution 561 takes effect, prohibiting stablecoins in aggregated eFX FX settlement.
2026-10-09—Public feedback window closes for Kenya's draft National Payment System Policy and Bill 2026.
2026-10-15—Africa Blockchain Festival 2026 opens in Nairobi, featuring live mobile money off-ramp deployments.
2026-11-04—Statutory compliance deadline for existing digital asset service providers under Kenya's VASP framework.
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