Nigeria’s Banking Sector Drives PAPSS Adoption With Digital Platforms , AI Chatbots

Nigeria’s banking sector is taking the lead in driving the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) adoption beyond traditional banking halls, integrating the platform into mobile apps, digital channels, and now artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, a move set to redefine the way Africans trade across borders.
United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc has emerged as the first financial institution in Africa to enable PAPSS-powered cross-border payments on a chatbot platform. The bank announced the successful integration of PAPSS into its AI-driven virtual assistant, LEO, enabling instant, seamless, and secure transactions in local currencies between African countries directly through a chat interface.
Speaking at the launch, UBA’s group managing director and chief executive, Oliver Alawuba, described the innovation as “a significant leap in the realisation of intra-African trade” and a milestone in the bank’s digital transformation journey.
“With PAPSS now fully integrated on our LEO platform, we are not just simplifying payments, we are breaking down the barriers to economic collaboration across African markets and allowing Africans to transact using their own local currencies. This is aligned with our vision of being at the heart of Africa’s economic transformation. Now, Africa trade begins.”
The launch marks a new phase in Nigeria’s embrace of PAPSS, a centralised cross-border payment infrastructure developed by Afreximbank in partnership with the African Union and the AfCFTA Secretariat. Launched in January 2022, PAPSS enables instant settlement of transactions in local currencies, bypassing costly and time-consuming reliance on third-party currencies such as the US dollar or the euro.
Beyond UBA’s milestone, Nigeria has established itself as the leading country in PAPSS adoption. According to the system’s May 2025 participation report, 22 Nigerian commercial banks are now fully onboarded, more than any other African nation. Ghana follows with 19.
The Nigerian banks on the PAPSS network include: First Bank, Access Bank, Stanbic IBTC, Sterling Bank, Wema Bank, Keystone Bank, Lotus Bank, Providus Bank, Polaris Bank, Union Bank, Jaiz Bank, Zenith Bank, Fidelity Bank, Optimus Bank, Coronation Merchant Bank, Parallex Bank, TajBank, FSDH Merchant Bank, Ecobank, FBNQuest Merchant Bank, Unity Bank, and UBA.
In total, PAPSS connects 16 African countries and over 150 commercial banks, laying the foundation for what its operators describe as a “borderless African economy” with 24/7 real-time settlement capabilities.
Nigeria’s rapid embrace of PAPSS has been accelerated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s recent reforms. In April 2025, the apex bank issued a directive mandating all Nigerian banks to adopt PAPSS for cross-border payments, part of its broader strategy to deepen regional trade and improve payment efficiency.
The policy introduced simplified documentation requirements for low-value transactions, up to $2,000 for individuals and $5,000 for corporates, allowing them to rely on existing Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) documents already on file with their banks.
The CBN also removed previous transaction caps of $20,000 per individual and $200,000 per bank per quarter, in line with its liberalisation of the foreign exchange market. Banks can now source forex for PAPSS settlements directly from the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market, reducing dependence on the CBN.
Industry analysts note that UBA’s integration of PAPSS into its chatbot platform shows how regulatory changes are translating into customer-facing innovations. By embedding the system into popular mobile banking apps and conversational interfaces, Nigerian banks are making cross-border transactions as easy as sending a message.
This shift is particularly significant for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individual traders, who often face high costs and long delays when transacting across African borders. With PAPSS-enabled digital banking, a merchant in Lagos can sell goods to a customer in Accra and receive payment in naira within seconds, while the buyer pays in Ghanaian cedis, all without routing through the US dollar or incurring multiple currency conversion fees.
Despite these gains, PAPSS still faces hurdles, including uneven adoption across African countries, differences in regulatory frameworks, and public awareness gaps. Currency volatility in some markets also poses a challenge.
However, proponents say that embedding PAPSS in everyday banking tools is the fastest route to mass adoption. By allowing customers to use channels they already trust — mobile apps, USSD, and now chatbots, banks can normalise cross-border local currency payments and make them part of everyday life.
For Nigeria, the strategy is clear: lead in both policy and innovation. By pairing regulatory support from the CBN with cutting-edge digital deployment by its banks, the country is positioning itself at the forefront of Africa’s financial integration.