upgrading the real time payments infrastructure: adopting the correct tools to modernize

As the world moves rapidly toward digital-first economies, real-time payments (RTP) are no longer a luxury for modern trade, commerce or value exchange, they’re the bedrock! I recently had the opportunity to engage in a powerful, cross-sector dialogue at the Seamless East Africa 2025 Summit. The panel I participated in focused on a critical question: “Upgrading the real-time payments infrastructure: adopting the correct tools to modernize.” It was more than a technical discussion; it was a strategic unpacking of what it will truly take to shift Africa from fragmented payment ecosystems to a cohesive, interoperable, and inclusive financial grid.

Let’s take a dive into some of the core questions we tackled and the insights that emerged.

Where Are the Gaps in africa’s Real-Time Payments Infrastructure, and where are the biggest opportunities for modernization?

Real-time payments infrastructure in East Africa and much of the continent remains a patchwork of siloed systems, non-interoperable platforms, and legacy rails. These gaps have continuously hindered efficiency, increased costs, and limited innovation.

As digital commerce and value exchange grows across Africa, businesses and consumers are demanding payment systems that are fast, reliable, and seamless across providers. The current infrastructure fails to meet these needs resulting in key market gaps.

Key Gaps Identified:

• Lack of full interoperability across Financial Institutions (Banks, Saccos, MFIs, etc.), Stores of value (wallets, accounts, etc.), and fintech platforms
• Limited access to APIs and real-time rails for innovators, limiting the possibility of payments solutions standardization, payments innovation and deeper integrations across solutions
• High operational costs (largely due to the multiple weaving of solutions needed to fulfil value, payment infrastructure switching costs, and cost of compliance) and low trust in system reliability attributed to the disparate standards in payments platforms and rails that cause friction in reliability and efficiency
• Limited rural and informal sector integration, which has neglected the push of real-time payment solutions to underserved and or marginalized areas (perhaps due to perceived non-profitability) in favor of the more urban and peri-urban locales where the white collared populace resides and trades.

Opportunities for Modernization:

• Standardizing and adopting API-driven infrastructure as the bare minimum (not wrapping legacy infrastructure with APIs)
• Mandating the adoption of existing payments standards such as ISO 20022 native messaging across multiple jurisdictions
• Incorporating Payment platforms and Switch-level fraud mitigation tools to address tracking and monitoring at source/processing points, all the while incorporating empirical training of algorithms to achieve AI-driven fraud detection systems that work in milliseconds.
• Exploring the effective and efficient adoption of Cloud-based deployment for agility and scale (if not undertaking the development of payment systems with native cloud-based compatibility)

Which technologies and tools are proving most effective for instant payments adoption, and how can they be deployed at scale?

Across the continent, a range of technologies are powering RTP transformation. However, adoption and scale remain uneven. With rising fintech adoption, mobile-first users, and growing cross-border trade, we explored (with fellow panelists) which tools are moving the needle and how to ensure scalable deployment.

Effective Technologies:

• ISO 20022: Global standard for rich, structured financial messaging (Read more about ISO 20022 👉 here)
• Open APIs: Enabling fintech and third parties to build on financial service provider/payment infrastructure. With regulators mandating open-access architectures that support innovation around the space of payments.(Use these links to delve deeper on what Open APIs are both from a payment perspective, and technology perspective).
• Zero Knowledge Proofs + Proxy Payment Systems: Linking identities (e.g., phone numbers, Company registration identifiers, etc.) to bank accounts and other stores of value thus enabling tokenized identity profiles that reduce friction at point of payment initiation and the verification of identity or transaction conditions without exposing private data which is crucial for real-time, privacy-sensitive use cases.
• Distributed ledger technology (DLT): Imagine clearing transactions in under 5 seconds! Adopting such emerging technologies as DLT to separate the flow of information about payments from the flow of funds, would greatly reduce the frictions to treasury and finance teams that need to sight funds to honor settlement positions, and or facilitate realization of value to the end beneficiaries of payment value. All the while addressing key inefficiencies in cases for interbank clearing, timestamping, or multi-country RTP reconciliation.
• Cloud-native switching and clearing: That enables elasticity that’s adaptable to volumes growth or seasonality of the payments cycles, cost reduction by consuming resources on demand, and faster rollout where less worry might go into figuring out the nitty-gritties of core hardware infrastructure.
• Low-code/no-code integration APIs: Enabling partners to plug into payment infrastructure easily, and in the case of sustained innovation enable entrepreneurs that wish to pilot or validate payment innovations in the market, quickly setup and ship without cracking their brains on how to manage a barrage of technical human capital (I’m all for our Devs having jobs, but what if 😄✌)
• Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI): Leveraging a multiplicity of key pillars in payments to drive a larger play in orchestrating the payments environment if not the end-user payment journey. A key example being India’s “India Stack“, where Identity, payment, and consent layers are working together to fulfil real-time payment use cases as popularized by Aadhaar + United Payments Interface (UPI) + DigiLocker working in concert.
• Programmable Payments via Smart Contracts: Primarily supporting payments that require escrow arrangements, milestone-based payments (e.g., agribusiness disbursements), among other “sensitive” payment flows especially solving for payments across full verticals or value chains. (Read more about smart contracts 👉here)

Scaling Strategies:

• National-Level Real-Time Payment Platforms: Through deliberate investments in or upgrades to national switches to be cloud-native, ISO 20022-compliant, and API accessible.
• Incentivize Adoption: Through Tiered Pricing & Regulation, or offering zero or low fees for real-time person-to-person (P2P) transactions under a threshold (e.g., <KES 1,000 or $5). Further to mandating participation from all licensed financial institutions, fintechs, and mobile money providers within the various geographical jurisdictions.
• Leverage Public-Private Infrastructure Investment Models: By
  encouraging co-investment from industry players to build shared services like national fraud engines, proxy directories, and sandbox environments.
• Ensuring Developer-Centric Ecosystem Enablement: By actively providing clear API and developer documentation, SDKs, test environments, and sandbox access that enable ease of use and integrations during the product development cycles for payment-led solutions.
• Scaling through Targeted Use Cases: Where such examples like government payments (G2P), school fees, SME settlements, loan disbursements, savings groups, and gig economy payrolls can serve as everyday cases for driving utilization and demonstrated volume for the underlying technologies whilst shaping user perception and or behavior.

What metrics or benchmarks should be used to evaluate the success of real-time payment infrastructure upgrades?

Evaluating the success of real-time payment (RTP) infrastructure upgrades requires a blend of quantitative and qualitative metrics that measure technical performance, ecosystem adoption, inclusion impact, and cross-border efficiency especially critical in the Pan-African context where payment maturity varies widely.

During the conversation I dove deeper into the recommended metrics, along with some real-world benchmarks to ground our panel conversation in facts and actionable insight.

Key Metrics & Benchmarks for Evaluating RTP Infrastructure Success

Transaction Volume & Growth Rate (Domestic RTP)

What to Track:

• Total number of RTP transactions processed monthly/annually.
• YoY growth of RTP transactions compared to legacy payments (e.g., EFT, RTGS, mobile money).
• Transaction types: P2P, B2B, B2C, G2P, C2B.

Why It Matters:

• This metric indicates ecosystem adoption and the relevance of RTP rails across user types and channels.

Interoperability Rate

What to Track:

• Percentage of RTP transactions that are inter-institutional (cross-bank, cross-wallet, bank-to-wallet).
• Percentage of providers (banks, wallets, fintech) integrated into the RTP scheme.
• Support for proxy identifiers (e.g., phone/email/business identifiers linked to stores of value).

Why It Matters:

• Interoperability is foundational to wide adoption, user convenience, and ecosystem trust.

Financial Inclusion & Usage Metrics

What to Track:

• Percentage of RTP users who are unbanked/underbanked (e.g., wallet-only, informal sector).
• Uptake among women, rural users, youth, gig workers.
• Access via USSD/feature phones vs smartphones.

Why It Matters:

• True RTP success requires broad-based access and usage, not just technology deployment.

Fraud Rate & Risk Efficiency

What to Track:

• RTP fraud rate per number of transactions over a given period (e.g., fraud losses / total RTP value).
• Detection and resolution time for suspicious RTP activity.
• Effectiveness of real-time fraud tools and blacklisting systems.

Why It Matters:

• High fraud rates or delayed detection erodes trust and adoption.

Transaction Speed (End-to-End Settlement Time)

What to Track:

• Average time from transaction initiation to final settlement (wouldn’t an ideal state be somewhere sub-10 seconds?).
• Percentage of transactions completed within target time (e.g., 95% within 5s and so on).

Why It Matters:

• The “real-time” promise must be fulfilled consistently, even at scale.

Cost Efficiency / Affordability

What to Track:

• Average transaction cost to user (consumer/merchant) compared to traditional channels.
• Cost to banks/fintech to integrate and operate RTP.
• Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) for RTP acceptance.

Why It Matters:

• High costs = low usage, especially among MSMEs, low-income consumers, gig economy workers and even individual consumers.

Cross-Border Real-Time Capability & Penetration

What to Track:

• Number of countries/markets connected to regional RTP platforms (e.g., PAPSS).
• Percentage of RTP volume with cross-border endpoints.
• Settlement time and cost for intra-African payments.

Why It Matters:

• Cross-border RTP is the litmus test of Africa’s financial unity. Without it, we’re still 54 fragmented markets. With it, we unlock a borderless digital economy for 1.4 billion people, that will drives Intra-African Trade, signal Interoperability & Regulatory Alignment, and indicate Infrastructure Maturity.

Conclusion

Real-time payments infrastructure success can’t be judged by the switches or platforms being live, it must be judged by who is using it, how fast, how safely, and at what cost. If it doesn’t move volumes, reduce friction, and broaden access, it’s not infrastructure it’s just tech.

We closed the panel agreeing that access is the master key. With the right API policies, technical standards, and open switch models, RTP innovation won’t just be possible, it will be inevitable.

Africa is already showing the path forward. We just need to connect the dots, open the rails, and scale together!