In this episode of Tech Aways, Ephraim sits down with Wiza Jalakasi, Commercial Lead for Middle East and Africa at EBANX, for a wide-ranging conversation about Africa’s payments landscape, the complexity of operating across the continent, and where the industry could be heading over the next few years. Wiza’s journey into fintech began as a web developer in Malawi before he moved into mobile technology and payments. After working at Africa’s Talking, Hover and Chipper Cash, he developed deep experience building products and commercial operations across African markets. At EBANX, his focus is on helping global merchants navigate Africa’s fragmented payments landscape and access local payment methods. A central theme of the conversation was that Africa’s payments infrastructure is not necessarily behind more developed markets. In some respects, the continent has leapfrogged them. Kenya’s mobile money ecosystem, Nigeria’s domestic payment infrastructure and South Africa’s increasingly diverse payment rails illustrate how different markets have developed around different systems. The bigger challenge for global merchants is fragmentation, with different currencies, regulations, payment methods and settlement requirements across countries. Wiza explained that EBANX essentially abstracts this complexity for global merchants, connecting them to local payment methods while handling much of the operational infrastructure behind the scenes. He discussed the growing interest from international companies in African consumers, but stressed that businesses entering the continent cannot treat Africa as a single market. A card-only strategy, for example, can significantly limit a merchant’s addressable market in countries where mobile money, bank transfers or other local payment methods dominate. The conversation also examined some of the less visible challenges in African payments, including fraud, foreign exchange and repatriation. Wiza argued that global fraud models can incorrectly flag legitimate African transactions because consumer behaviour differs across markets, making local data increasingly important. FX presents another challenge, as merchants often want to settle in major currencies while collecting payments in markets with volatile local currencies. Looking ahead, Wiza expects account-to-account payments and real-time settlement to become increasingly important across Africa. He also sees artificial intelligence changing fraud prevention and potentially creating new ways for consumers to interact with financial services, including through voice interfaces. He expects further consolidation in African fintech, which he believes could ultimately strengthen the ecosystem. For his own predictions, Wiza identified Ethiopia as Africa’s most underrated market and backed account-to-account payments as the payment method most likely to gain ground by 2030. If he could change one regulation across the continent, he would introduce a single African Union licence for electronic money issuance, allowing providers to operate across multiple African markets under a common framework. Check out Wiza’s blog here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit techaways.substack.com
