From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
To dismantle one of the most entrenched barriers to intra-African trade, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), in strategic partnership with African deep-tech pioneer Interstellar, has unveiled the PAPSS African Currency Marketplace (PACM), a revolutionary financial market infrastructure set to transform the way Africa trades.
Announced on the sidelines of the 2025 Afreximbank Annual Meeting (AAM2025) in Abuja, the platform marks a critical leap in the journey toward true financial sovereignty and seamless intra-African commerce.
For decades, Africa’s economic integration has been hampered by the inability of its 41 currencies to interoperate freely. This limitation has forced businesses to rely on hard foreign currencies—such as the U.S. dollar or euro—for cross-border trade, leading to an estimated $5 billion annually in transaction costs, delays, and lost opportunities.
“PAPSS African Currency Marketplace is fully transparent, order book-driven, and operates with trusted counterparties, strictly adhering to local regulatory frameworks and global best practices,” said Mike Ogbalu III, CEO of PAPSS. “By creating a single, continent-wide liquidity pool, PACM serves as a powerful liquidity engine for intra-African commerce.”
Since its inception in 2022, PAPSS has enabled real-time payments across 17 African countries, integrating 14 national switches and more than 150 commercial banks. But Ogbalu said that while the initial PAPSS rails tackled the payment layer, currency inconvertibility remained a “persistent hurdle.”
“We soon realised that solving for payments alone was not enough,” he explained. “Corporations, airlines, reinsurance firms, and multinationals operating across Africa still faced trapped capital, arising from limited currency convertibility and overreliance on hard currencies.”
Indeed, over $2 billion is currently locked in various African economies, preventing sectors like aviation from repatriating funds due to local currency depreciation and foreign exchange restrictions.
“The PAPSS African Currency Marketplace is the answer to that problem—an extension of our commitment to building sovereign, frictionless financial infrastructure for Africa,” Ogbalu declared.
Jointly developed with Interstellar, the PACM enables direct, peer-to-peer currency exchanges between African currencies—without routing through external ones. The system is blockchain-agnostic, enterprise-grade, and built with institutional-grade security and speed. It ensures near real-time settlement, robust compliance, and long-term sustainability.
“This is not just about technology, it is about fulfilling a continental vision,” said Ernest Mbenkum, Founder and CEO of Interstellar. “PAPSS African Currency Marketplace was built from the ground up to serve Africa’s specific needs. PAPSS and Interstellar are not just collaborators, we are co-architects of a new financial future.”
He added, “African currencies deserve a better place in the world. With this marketplace, your local currency is no longer just a medium of exchange, it becomes a vehicle of opportunity.”
Mbenkum further stressed that this launch is only the beginning of Interstellar’s mission to create Africa-first financial infrastructure that does not depend on foreign rails.
During the pilot phase, more than 80 African companies traded across 12 currency pairs, with all transactions settled in local currencies. A practical example: Kenya Airways can now directly exchange revenue earned in Nigerian Naira into Kenyan Shillings without passing through the dollar. Early adopters like ZEP-RE (PTA Reinsurance Company) and Access View Africa described the platform as “a dream come true.”
“The PAPSS African Currency Marketplace gives us the power to transform trade dramatically—bringing us to trade with each other with a major benefit that we can now accept each other’s currency,” said Haytham El Maayergi, Executive Vice President at Afreximbank.
Interest in the marketplace is already expanding beyond Africa. According to Ogbalu, foreign institutions have expressed interest in joining the ecosystem, signalling global validation of PACM’s potential.
“This demand proves the value of what we’ve built,” he noted. “It’s a signal that the world is paying attention to Africa’s financial transformation.”
With its current network of over 150 banks, PACM promises to remove currency friction, liberate capital, and drastically cut down settlement times—from weeks to mere seconds.
Concluding the launch, Haytham El Maayergi declared:
“Africa will not rise by ideas. Africa will rise by actions.”
The PAPSS African Currency Marketplace is now live and open to eligible corporations, financial institutions, and market participants across the continent—ushering in a new era of trade built on African currencies, African infrastructure, and African ambition.