finance

Fast-track settlement is making East African payments easier—and a new strategy emerges.

This article appears in the October 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine.

East Africa is beginning to transform the national payment systems used by millions of businesses and consumers into infrastructure for a more integrated regional market. Rather than building an entirely new platform, the emerging strategy is to connect existing systems, enabling money to move between countries more quickly and with less friction.

Rwanda and Tanzania are at the forefront of that effort, working to connect Tanzania’s Instant Payment System (TIPS) with Rwanda’s National Payment Switch (RSwitch) to create an instant-payment corridor under the Cross-Border Payment System Masterplan of the East African Community (EAC).

The work is moving beyond policy discussions into the technical, operational, and regulatory arrangements required to make the system function. Its significance, however, extends beyond faster remittances. If national payment systems become interoperable, businesses could pay suppliers, receive payments from customers, and settle commercial transactions across borders more easily than under traditional arrangements.

Small and midsize enterprises, banks, fintech companies, and mobile-money operators could all benefit if regional payments begin to match the speed and convenience of domestic transactions.

This Rwanda-Tanzania initiative offers the most immediate test of the concept, but it is not the only example of East Africa’s emerging payments architecture. Kenya’s Pesalink, the country’s instant-payment network, connected to the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) in February. The partnership enables instant, round-the-clock payments from PAPSS participants to banks and mobile-money operators on the Pesalink network in Kenya, with transactions settled in local currencies.

Those two developments illustrate different routes toward the same objective. Rwanda and Tanzania are connecting their national instant payment systems directly, while Kenya is linking its domestic infrastructure to a wider continental network. Together, they suggest that African payments integration may depend less on building a single system than on making existing systems work together.

EAC’s Regional Masterplan

A broader regional effort is also moving into implementation. On August 24, the EAC announced the establishment of three technical working groups to support implementation of its Masterplan. The Masterplan is “anchored on four key pillars”: governance and regulation, infrastructure, inclusivity, and capacity building. It includes 20 strategic initiatives to strengthen cross-border payment systems.

Total trade for members of the EAC in 2025 is reported at $156.6 billion, including $19.3 billion among partner states, underscoring the system’s commercial implications. As goods and services move more freely across the region, the financial infrastructure supporting those transactions will also need to become easier to use.

“East Africa’s push for interoperable payments could fundamentally change the economics of regional trade,” said Robert Omotunde, executive director and chief investment officer of Lagos-based asset management and advisory firm MDU Capital. “The significance goes beyond making cross-border transactions faster or cheaper; it is about creating the financial infrastructure through which African businesses can trade more seamlessly across borders.”

As the African Continental Free Trade Area expands markets for cross-border businesses and increases demand for payment systems that support that commerce, opportunities could eventually extend beyond the EAC. Faster settlement, lower transaction costs, and greater use of local currencies could reduce some of the financial friction that still accompanies regional trade. While East Africa is beginning to connect payment systems already embedded in its banks, mobile-money networks, and the wider financial system, the region faces the challenge of ensuring those connections operate reliably across different regulatory and monetary environments.

Vincent Nwanma is a contributing writer based in Nigeria.