West Africa's Open-Banking Rails Accused of Entrenching Legacy Bank Monopolies
Analysis argues that West Africa's central bank open-banking rollout is concentrating control of payment rails in legacy financial institutions rather than opening the ecosystem to new entrants. The framing positions the regulatory design as a structural risk for fintechs seeking equitable access to the region's shared financial infrastructure.
West Africa Open Banking: one name, eight countries, one question
Wave — francophone Africa's most-used payments app, valued above $1.7 billion — appears on neither of the BCEAO's two new lists for its regional instant payment platform.
Ecobank, a legacy bank, is the only institution certified in five of the eight member states. A business in Cotonou or Bamako that wants to plug into the regional payment rail today has exactly one technical counterparty: a bank.
The BCEAO says more certifications are coming — and HUB2's founder, who has a local entity on the API list, reads that as a sequencing choice, not a closed door. He may be right. But his own question cuts deepest: what does the waiting cost? Nobody has put a figure on it. For every fintech that can't yet access the rail, the incumbents who can are writing the commercial terms that will be very hard to rewrite later.
1 source
- Open Rails, Closed Doors: West Africa’s Central Bank Is Entrenching Bank Monopolies · launchbaseafrica.com · T1