Nigeria's NIP leads Africa in payment inclusivity, but cross-border transfers remain challenging

In an AfricaNenda media training in Abidjan this week, TechCabal reported that Africa has 36 instant payment systems but few meet true inclusivity standards beyond just transaction speed. Nigeria's NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP) system stands out as 'Mature' in AfricaNenda's inclusivity framework due to its broad inclusion of banks, microfinance institutions, mobile money providers, and its handling of frequent small transactions that make digital payments part of everyday commerce.

However, simply copying Nigeria's model won't work for smaller African markets with different economic scales. Kenya's PesaLink, while effective for bank-to-bank transfers, misses much of the population that relies on M-PESA, SACCOs, and fintechs. The real challenge isn't creating one dominant payment system but making transfers between existing systems cheap, predictable, and technically straightforward.

For Nigerians, this means while NIP works well for domestic transfers within Nigeria, sending money to other African countries still involves extra intermediaries, foreign exchange costs, and delays due to differing currencies, regulations, and systems. The focus should shift to interoperability between systems rather than declaring one system as the universal model.

Will Nigeria's push for NIP interoperability with other African systems finally make cross-border payments as easy as sending money to a friend in Lagos?

SOURCE: https://techcabal.com/2026/07/27/africas-payment-rails-have-a-participation-problem/