PAPSS to allow local currencies to be used in intr...

PAPSS to allow local currencies to be used in intra-Africa transactions

Zim Now Writer

The Pan African Payment and Settlement System and the African Securities Exchange Association have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enhance collaboration and cooperation in promoting cross-border payments of Capital Markets infrastructure in Africa.

Commenting on the signing, the Chief Executive Officer of PAPSS, Mr. Mike Ogbalu III, said: “PAPSS supports a wide variety of use cases, including cross-border retail and trade transactions for individuals and corporations and cross-border investments with the African Stock Exchanges. Consequently, working with ASEA, which pioneered the AELP with cross-border securities trading as a central tenet, is a significant step towards the rollout of PAPSS throughout the continent.

“This partnership is a demonstration of our commitment to driving trade flows and economic growth in Africa. Through our collaboration, we aim to create a reliable and efficient payment system that will enable investors to easily trade across different stock exchanges on the continent. Our immediate task is to create a workforce between PAPSS and ASEA as soon as possible to identify ways to facilitate the transfer of funds across ASEA member African Stock Exchanges. To that end, I'd like to extend an invitation to the relevant capital markets stakeholders to join us in this ground-breaking venture for the African business and investment communities.”

The President of ASEA and Chief Executive Officer of Botswana Stock Exchange, Mr Thapelo Tsheole, said: “We are delighted to partner with PAPSS on this important initiative. Our capital markets integration initiative through the AELP will play a critical role in deepening Africa’s capital markets and promoting cross-border investment. PAPSS’s expertise in payment settlement will be instrumental in the cross-border transfer of funds among the participating exchanges.”

The MoU was signed on April 14 during the ASEA 2023 Building African Financial Markets Seminar held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, which brought together Stock Exchanges and capital markets stakeholders from across Africa to discuss ways to deepen integration and connectivity of African capital markets.

PAPSS enables instant cross-border payment in local currency.

Through the umbrella of ASEA, with 9 exchanges and a combined market capitalization of $1.5 trillion, PAPSS provides an opportunity as the payment system to further enhance the African Exchanges Linkage Project, a flagship project of ASEA to facilitate cross-border trading of securities in Africa.

PAPSS has gone live in the countries comprising the West African Monetary Zone, namely Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Gambia, and Guinea.

Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Djibouti have recently joined the network and will soon be operational.

This partnership with ASEA will also facilitate the deployment of PAPSS across the ASEA member nations.

The collaboration aims to create a reliable and efficient payment system that will enable investors to easily trade across different stock exchanges on the continent.

This article was developed from a press release by APO