Africa’s digital payments ecosystem is growing rapidly, but the road to reaching the following billion users runs through one core idea: collaboration built on convenience, trust, and local relevance.
This was the main takeaway from the Moonshot panel session on Thursday titled “Building Africa’s payments superhighway: putting users first with security, scale, and the next billion.”
Oremeyi Akah, chief customer experience officer at Interswitch; Bamidele Obende, divisional head of business growth at Cybervergent; and Chai Gang, deputy director of the Payments Systems Policy Department at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), explored how technology, security, and regulation must evolve together to unlock the continent’s full payments potential.
“Technology is only useful when it is convenient,” said Akah. “Customers don’t wake up thinking APIs; they just think, ‘let my transaction go!’ It’s all about convenience if we want our people to use it.” She added that products not tailored to customers’ daily needs or backed by reliable systems “will not be able to scale.”
Obende focused on the need for stronger cybersecurity and user awareness amid increasing digital transactions. “You need to implement the right protocols,” he said. “And you need to ensure that you educate your users continuously on the things you are building. When external users access your product, how are you thinking about their security?”
Representing the CBN, Chai Gang emphasised the regulator’s evolving approach to fostering innovation through collaboration. “What a regulator ensures is that they create an enabling environment for innovation and safety,” he explained.
“When stakeholders are involved in the regulatory process, it makes way for better compliance and innovation.” He also pointed to the role of regulatory sandboxes in encouraging “compliance by design,” allowing fintechs to build within clear guardrails and bring solutions to market faster.
Akah concluded with a reminder that Africa’s payment models must reflect the continent’s realities. “We must learn not to imitate but to modify systems for our local contexts,” she said. “Nigeria is not Kenya, Nigeria is not Ghana.”
The panel ended with a consensus: Africa’s payments future won’t be defined by competition but by collaboration and by innovations grounded in trust, inclusion, and local context.
