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That single number from the Reserve Bank's own research should stop anyone in their tracks. South Africans earning under R1,250 a month spend roughly 5% of their income on cash-related costs — fees, travel to distant machines, repeat…

Paystack launched Zap, its consumer savings app, while still holding only a payments licence — the kind that lets you move money, not keep it. Nigeria's central bank fined it ₦250 million for exactly that gap.

Nearly four in every ten of Nigeria's electricity customers have no meter. They get an estimated bill, dispute it, stop paying, or pay less than they owe — and the distribution companies haemorrhage money they never actually collect.

The naira depreciation and rising costs are real. But the mechanism that actually broke Baxi's economics is simpler: Nigerians stopped needing to queue at a POS terminal.

Most African e-mobility companies are still burning through investor money to prove their model works. MAX says it has already crossed into profit — and that claim, if it holds, reframes what this round actually is.

Ethiopia joining PAPSS matters — 130 million people and one of Africa's fastest-growing economies now have a formal path into the continental payments network.