Pan-African Payment and Settlement Systems (PAPSS) goes live among central banks

The much touted Pan-African Payment and Settlement Systems (PAPSS) has been rolled out among all central banks in Africa.

The system which is expected to serve as a payment mechanism for transactions on the continent will save African businesses about $5 billion annually in cost of transactions.

PAPSS will facilitate and help drive the enormous growth in intra-African trade, resulting from the African Continental Free Trade Area’s creation of a single market throughout Africa.

It will also facilitate the payment, clearing and settlement system for intra-African trade; simplify intra-regional transactions; and reduce the cost, duration and time variability of cross-border payments.

Vice President of the Africa Development Bank, Solomon Quaynor, believes this new payment system will help businesses to boost intra-regional trade.

“As a development bank for the continent, we are proud of the success story for this journey today and hope that it will benefit all Africans.”

“The new payment system is critical to our quest to boost intra African trade and reduce cost of doing business for Africans which has been an impediment for some time now” he noted.

Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia stressed the need for all Central Banks on the continent to switch to the system.

“It will be prudent for all Central Banks to allow their national switches to be linked to the system so that we don’t have to go in for individual banks to be hooked”, he stressed.

Chief Executive of PAPSS, Mike Ogbalu, said measures are put in place to ensure that traders benefit immensely from the system.

“The system we have built is an infrastructure that will require third party interactions, so we may need even mobile money agents and other payment channels. By this way, traders can transact without necessary going to the banks when they need to send cash to other countries” he said.

The system has already been installed by all six Central Banks in the West African Monetary Zone including Ghana.

The system will reduce the cost of doing business on the continent significantly.