EthSwitch Clears $8 Billion as Ethiopia's Digital Payments Scale Up
Ethiopia's national payment switch EthSwitch processed the equivalent of $8 billion in interoperable transactions during the most recent fiscal year, recording ETB 2.6 billion in profit on ETB 1.26 trillion in total transaction volume. The figures position Ethiopia's digital payments infrastructure as one of the fastest-scaling national payment systems on the continent.
EthSwitch: $8 billion moved, but barely any of it at a checkout
The number that jumps out isn't the $8 billion total — it's the split inside it.
Person-to-person transfers account for over four-fifths of everything EthSwitch processed. Point-of-sale payments at actual merchants? $68 million. That's less than one percent.
EthSwitch has acknowledged why: Ethiopians are routing merchant payments through P2P transfers because merchant terminals simply aren't there yet. The plumbing exists and works — one million transactions in a single day proves that. But the infrastructure hasn't yet reached the shop counter.
That gap is where Ethiopia's next phase of growth either happens or stalls. Real-time rails connecting 130 million people are genuinely rare on this continent. The question is whether merchant acceptance catches up.
2 sources
- EthSwitch Reports ETB 2.6 Billion Profit as Ethiopia’s Digital Payments Boom Accelerates · itnewsafrica.com · T2
- Ethiopia’s Payment Switch Clears $8 Billion As Instant Payments Surge · cioafrica.co · T2