Financial experts have said that interoperability and innovation are critical to fundamentally reshaping cross-border payments.
They pointed out that leveraging existing infrastructure and fostering new technological advancements are essential to creating seamless and efficient international transactions across the regions.
This was discussed during the 2025 Africa and Middle East Depositories Association Conference (AMEDA 2025) in Lagos on Friday.
The theme of the conference is “ Future of Cross-Border Payments and Settlements”.
This discussion is pivotal as over 80 percent of intra-African transactions are routed through correspondent banks outside the continent, resulting in approximately $5 billion in fees annually.
Kari Tukur, regional vice president, customer solutions, at Mastercard, said that to solve instant cross-border payment, card networks have to couple their business to leverage their global footprint to deliver instant payments across countries on a large scale.
“ The building blocks are existing; we just need to piece them together to address these challenges,” she said.
The need for instant and cheap cross-border payments is rising fast as Africa’s digital economy is projected to reach $180 billion by 2030, driving the demand for efficient cross-border payments, according to Cellulant, a digital payments platform for businesses across Africa.
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It estimates that cross-border e-commerce to expand by over 17 percent annually and reach $75 billion by 2025
According to data from the United Nations, fees in Sub-Saharan Africa remain among the highest globally, often exceeding 8-10 percent of the transaction value and sometimes reaching 30 percent for low-value cross-border payments
Oliver Alawuba, general managing director/CEO of UBA Group, said that the cross-border landscape is evolving, and the solution is happening fast, but it will need collaboration across payment platforms.
“We have players who are aggregators and are crashing the cost of payments across borders.”
“ Interoperability and defragmentisation will be critical, looking at the future of cross-border payments,” Alawuba said.
Okey Umeano, Acting Director of the Financial Markets Department at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), collaboration between the public and private sectors requires shared objectives while setting aside commercial interests.
“The first is shared objectives, objectives like financial inclusion, security, among others. I mean, between the public sector and the private sector, there are areas where we have to find a way to keep commercial interests on the side and really work together. So we have to agree on, you know, the same objectives,” he said.
He noted that, on the part of regulators collaborating with the private sector, there must be structured governance systems that are flexible. He added that open communication techniques should be adopted, with transparent sharing mechanisms governing the collaboration.
Haruna Jalo-Waziri, Vice Chairman of AMEDA, said that as economies navigate complex disruptions, there is an imperative to build resilient markets, across Africa and the Middle East to enable inclusive digital access, develop sustainable investment pathways, and drive cross-border integration.
