Twenty hours ago, the Bank of Central African States announced it had formally joined the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System. The announcement was dry and technical, as central bank communications tend to be. What it actually described was the moment that six countries — Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, CAR, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Chad — and 72 million people plugged into a continental financial network that is quietly rewiring how Africa trades with itself. BEAC's membership brings PAPSS to 28 African countries and more than 190 connected commercial banks and fintechs. BEAC's governor, Yvon Sana Bangui, was direct about the significance: "By joining PAPSS, BEAC is creating the conditions for faster, more affordable and more efficient cross-border payments between CEMAC countries and Africa." PAPSS CEO Mike Ogbalu III called it "a significant milestone." He is not wrong.
The problem PAPSS was built to solve
To appreciate why this matters, it helps to understand the financial absurdity it replaces. Until recently, if a logistics firm in Cameroon wanted to pay a supplier in the DRC, no direct settlement mechanism existed. The Cameroonian company had to convert CFA francs into US dollars, route the transaction through a correspondent bank in New York or London, then send the dollars back into Africa — where they were converted again into Congolese francs. The whole process routinely took three to seven days and drained an estimated $5 billion annually from African trade in conversion fees and correspondent banking charges. That $5 billion did not disappear. It moved to non-African financial intermediaries. PAPSS eliminates this by reducing dependence on Western correspondent banks for intra-African transactions. The system connects central banks and commercial institutions through a centralized settlement switch. A Cameroonian importer initiates a payment in CFA francs; the transaction is validated and transmitted within seconds to the recipient's bank, which credits the beneficiary in their local currency. The underlying settlement between central banks happens at the end of the day on a net basis — meaning only the daily balance across all transactions needs to be settled in hard currency, not each individual transaction. The result is a dramatic reduction in the foreign exchange liquidity that central banks need to hold in reserve.
What's actually built so far
PAPSS launched in January 2022, starting as a pilot among West African Monetary Zone countries. It has expanded steadily since: as of this month, 28 countries are connected, with 190+ commercial banks and 16 payment switches. In June 2025, PAPSS launched the "PAPSSCARD" — Africa's first continental card scheme, designed to challenge Visa and Mastercard's dominance of intra-African card transactions. A month later, the PAPSS African Currency Marketplace went live, creating a direct peer-to-peer exchange platform for African currencies — a direct response to the $846 million in "trapped capital" that international airlines alone hold in African accounts they cannot repatriate. BEAC's integration does not happen overnight. PAPSS and BEAC will work through the end of 2026 to operationalize the membership and integrate commercial banks across the CEMAC region into the system. A pilot phase with BCEAO — the West African central bank covering Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, and five other countries — is also scheduled to begin later this year. If both integrations proceed on schedule, PAPSS will have connected Francophone Africa's two main monetary blocs into a single continental network before the end of 2026.
What it means for Central Africa specifically
For CEMAC countries, the practical implication is a structural shift in how cross-border trade finance works. Regional freight operators managing corridors like Douala-N'Djamena or Pointe-Noire-Bangui have historically run on cash or dollar-denominated accounts precisely because local currency settlement was too slow and expensive. PAPSS changes that arithmetic. Real-time settlement in local currencies lowers transaction costs, frees up working capital, and — critically — allows local subcontractors and SMEs to participate in supply chains that previously required offshore dollar accounts to access. There is a broader macroeconomic dimension as well. CEMAC central banks have been under sustained pressure from hard currency shortages and foreign exchange volatility. By reducing the volume of individual transactions that require dollar conversion, PAPSS preserves scarce foreign exchange reserves and insulates local businesses from exchange-rate shocks. For a region where currency volatility has repeatedly disrupted trade flows along the Lobito Corridor and Gulf of Guinea shipping lanes, that is not a marginal benefit.
Two structural challenges remain. First, currency volatility in some CEMAC member states — particularly Chad and the Republic of Congo, whose finances are under fiscal pressure — creates counterparty risk within the settlement system. Second, commercial bank integration across the region is uneven: some of the 190+ connected institutions are large pan-African groups like Ecobank; smaller domestic banks in CAR or Equatorial Guinea may take considerably longer to come online. PAPSS's ambition to reach 30 countries and 500 million bank accounts by end-2025 was not fully met — the expansion is real but slower than projected.
None of that changes the significance of what BEAC's membership represents. AfCFTA's promise of a continental single market has always depended on a payment infrastructure capable of making intra-African trade as frictionless as trade with Europe or Asia. For Central Africa, that infrastructure arrived this week.
