Samuel M

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Samuel M

Samuel M

@corridor_intel

African payment corridors are broken in specific, diagnosable ways. Mapping FX liquidity, settlement systems and treasury architecture across Africa.

Katılım Mart 2026
141 Takip Edilen150 Takipçiler
Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
Several threads converged today that are worth reading as one signal rather than several. Safaricom cut M-PESA business tariffs by up to 50%. A separate account flagged Nigeria's $23 billion remittance corridor still carrying fees above 8%, against a sub-1% benchmark on newer settlement rails. Prudential Bank surfaced PAPSS directly inside its mobile app rather than leaving it as backend infrastructure. And separately, a builder's conference recap highlighted that compliance requirements. KYC, AML, licensing are diverging further across African markets even as the technical rails converge. Put together: cost is compressing faster than complexity is simplifying. Mobile-money and remittance pricing is falling under genuine competitive pressure. Settlement rails are getting faster and more accessible. But the compliance layer underneath all of it is getting harder to build for, not easier, as more jurisdictions formalize their own requirements. That gap is where the real margin in African payments infrastructure will sit over the next few years. Not in who has the cheapest rail, but in who has actually solved the multi-jurisdiction compliance problem well enough to move volume through the cheap rail without friction. Fee compression gets the headlines. Compliance architecture is where the sustainable advantage actually gets built.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
8%+ fees on a $23B corridor is the number that should get more attention than it does. The gap to sub-1% isn't really a technology story though. Lightning or any low-cost rail still needs a licensed off-ramp with real naira liquidity at the other end. Compression happens on the messaging layer fast; it happens on the cash-out layer only as fast as licensing and liquidity allow.
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zappr
zappr@zappr_bitcoin·
July looked something like this: •Fixed bugs •Engaged with the community •Continued development after launch Why we’re doing this at all: Nigeria’s remittance corridor moves $23 billion a year. Average fee: over 8%. Lightning moves the same value for a fraction of 1%. 3/
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zappr
zappr@zappr_bitcoin·
New month, new chapter. 🧵 Two months ago, @zappr_bitcoin was just an idea. Today, we’re still here. Still shipping. Still fixing bugs. Still replying to every message. Still believing self-custodial Bitcoin should be easier for everyone. 1/
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
@MiaKwaMia254 The knock-on effect worth watching is competitive pressure on other mobile-money operators in the region. Once one dominant player moves on merchant pricing, the rest usually have to follow within a quarter or lose share on cost-sensitive small-business volume.
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꧁༒☬MiaKwaMia☬༒꧂
꧁༒☬MiaKwaMia☬༒꧂@MiaKwaMia254·
Lower M-PESA charges could be a real boost for small businesses. Every shilling saved on transaction costs is money that can go back into stock, wages, or growth. If sustained, this move could make digital payments even more attractive for traders across Kenya.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
Compliance-by-design in payment architecture is the right instinct, but it doesn't erase the underlying problem: African regulatory regimes genuinely conflict, not just differ. This becomes much more interesting when viewed from the perspective of regulatory divergence rather than compliance completeness. A well-made point is circulating on embedding KYC/AML and transaction screening into payment-rail architecture from the outset rather than treating compliance as a bolt-on. That's the right instinct, and it's a meaningfully better foundation than the alternative. What it doesn't fully resolve is the harder structural problem underneath. African payment corridors don't share a common compliance standard. KYC thresholds, AML screening intensity, and licensing requirements vary meaningfully across jurisdictions, sometimes in ways that actively conflict. A compliance layer designed for one corridor's regulatory posture can become either insufficient or unnecessarily restrictive the moment volume crosses into a neighboring market. This is why architecture decisions in this space tend to bifurcate into two patterns: build for the strictest common denominator across every corridor you might touch, which is expensive and slows time-to-market, or build modular compliance layers that swap logic per corridor, which is more scalable but considerably harder to engineer and audit correctly. For institutions evaluating infrastructure builders in this space, the real diligence question isn't whether compliance is embedded. It's which of those two patterns the architecture actually follows, and whether the team building it has priced in the cost of that decision honestly.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
A cut this size on business tariffs changes merchant behavior faster than most policy interventions do. Small traders route around fee-sensitive friction immediately. The number worth watching next isn't adoption, it's whether transaction volume growth outpaces the revenue Safaricom gave up, which is the real test of whether this was a competitive necessity or a genuine growth bet.
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ONJOLO KENYA🇰🇪
ONJOLO KENYA🇰🇪@onjolo_kenya·
Safaricom just slashed M-PESA charges by up to 50%, starting today. Here’s what changes for you: Pochi la Biashara (Aug 1 – Oct 31) Payments up to Sh200? Now FREE. Sh201–500 → Sh7 Sh501–1,000 → Sh13 Sh1,001–1,500 → Sh23 Sh1,501–2,500 → Sh33 Sh2,501–250,000 → Sh50 Buy Goods till (from Aug 7) Free limit jumps from Sh200 to Sh500. Above that: just 0.55%, capped at Sh200. Till M-PESA transfers Nearly half price across the board. Sh10,000 now costs Sh45 instead of Sh90. Till PayBill transfers Same story. Sh5,000 drops from Sh34 to Sh17.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
Stepping-stone framing is right, and the reason is usually overlooked: stablecoins solve messaging speed, not the FX/liquidity constraint underneath. An FI can settle a transfer instantly and still be stuck holding the currency-conversion risk that used to sit with a correspondent bank. The rail changed. The exposure just moved to a different desk.
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Windsurf.KE ☀️
Windsurf.KE ☀️@XRPinKE·
@NLongTrieu @WKahneman Nope this is just Genius vs Clarity. Most African countries don’t have much crypto regulation. Stablecoins are the stepping stone that get African FI’s onchain. But RLUSD doesn’t solve the liquidity issues nor several other issues that face the forex market. Then regs then XRP.
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WrathofKahneman
WrathofKahneman@WKahneman·
Hidden pieces: On July 6, Nuvion, an AI banking/xborder pay platform announced $RLUSD integration. What went under the radar? In Jan, Nuvion also began working with #Ripple partner Flutterwave for stables in Africa. 1/3
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
Worth sharpening the triangle. Ripple isn't just partnered with Flutterwave. It took an equity stake in the Series E and embedded RLUSD as the primary settlement asset across Flutterwave's Send App remittance corridors specifically. That's ownership plus infrastructure control, not a peer relationship. If Nuvion is layering RLUSD on top of that, the more interesting question isn't whether there's a triangle. It's whether Nuvion becomes a wallet/UX layer sitting on rails Ripple already has a financial stake in, rather than an independent node.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
The mobile integration piece matters more than it looks. PAPSS working at the API/settlement layer is one thing, but a bank actually surfacing it inside a consumer mobile app is what determines whether real transaction volume shows up. Infrastructure being technically live and infrastructure being where customers actually transact are two different adoption curves.
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Goddie
Goddie@Goddie_Ke·
Prudential Bank Ltd has integrated the Pan African Payment and Settlement System into its mobile banking app, allowing customers to send and receive cross-border payments across participating African markets at any time. Transactions can be completed directly in local currencies, reducing conversion costs and reliance on hard currencies while supporting trade and retail payments across the continent.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
@koxy_Dev @apiconflagos Appreciate the exchange. This is the kind of thing that's easy to underweight until you're three markets in and retrofitting. Curious what you've found works in practice: uniform-strict architecture from the start, or modular per-corridor logic?
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K̴OXY #WID👩🏽‍🍳
K̴OXY #WID👩🏽‍🍳@koxy_Dev·
That’s a great point. Compliance isn’t a one-size-fits-all problem. Different jurisdictions have different regulatory expectations, and in some cases, those requirements can even conflict. Thanks for adding this perspective, it highlights an important architectural consideration that often gets overlooked.
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K̴OXY #WID👩🏽‍🍳
K̴OXY #WID👩🏽‍🍳@koxy_Dev·
Reflecting on my speaking session at API Conference Day 2, where I shared insights on “Building Crypto Payment APIs in Africa.” @apiconflagos One of the key points I highlighted is that building payment rails goes beyond just the technology. When creating these systems, especially without relying on third-party providers, compliance and regulatory considerations must be embedded into the architecture from the beginning. With different countries having their own regulatory frameworks - the compliance layer, including KYC/KYB, AML, risk assessment, and transaction screening, becomes a critical foundation for building secure and scalable payment infrastructure. The future of Web3 payments will not be built by a single company. It will be shaped by founders, developers, and ecosystem builders creating products that solve real-world problems. If you missed the conference, no worries, you can still access my slides. Simply visit apiconf.net/2026slides and search for “Progress” to find my session materials. I’d love to hear your thoughts: what do you think is the biggest challenge founders face when building compliant Web3 payment infrastructure in Africa?
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
"Make the most of what exists" is the underrated one of the three. A lot of new-rail announcements get attention that linking existing IPS and mobile-money switches doesn't, even though the interoperability gains there are often cheaper and faster to realize than building new infrastructure from scratch.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
A well-sourced thread on Africa-China settlement infrastructure is circulating this week, built on direct conversations with Chinese expats operating across African markets rather than secondary reporting. The headline data point: Standard Bank's RMB clearing volume has grown from roughly $500 million to $1.2 billion, and CIPS participation across the continent continues to expand. The more interesting observation sits underneath that growth. Institutional settlement volume through CIPS is accelerating. But private actors individual exporters and expats moving personal or business capital continue to route meaningfully through USD stablecoins rather than RMB, even where RMB clearing is cheaper and faster on paper. That divergence is the real story. CIPS and RMB clearing solve a bank-level problem: counterparty risk, cost, and settlement speed between institutions. They do not solve an individual-level problem: exit optionality. A private actor holding RMB inside China's capital-control perimeter has fewer options for where that capital can move next than one holding a USD stablecoin. Until China's own capital account opens further, that asymmetry persists regardless of how much institutional CIPS volume grows. For any institution building strategy around Africa-China settlement, the useful distinction isn't which rail is technically superior. It's recognizing that institutional adoption metrics and private behavioral preference are tracking two different underlying constraints and growth on one side won't resolve the constraint on the other.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
Good distinction. One variable that deserves more attention: on/off-ramp licensing capacity is usually sized against historical volume, not the demand a faster settlement rail creates once it's live. PAPSS or any instant rail can accelerate the transaction itself, but if licensed capacity doesn't scale ahead of the volume it enables, the friction just relocates from settlement speed to queueing at the licensed on-ramp.
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The Kenyan Investor
The Kenyan Investor@KenyanInvestorr·
Well put. I'd also add PAPSS to the conversation because it makes the same point from an African perspective. It's a better payment rail, but it doesn't create FX liquidity. If there isn't enough shilling or naira depth, the faster rail doesn't change that. And that's really the challenge in Kenya. The transfer itself can happen almost instantly, but getting in and out of shillings at scale still depends on licensed on- and off-ramps. Until that layer is fully developed and supported by regulation, that's where most of the friction remains.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
A useful framing is circulating this week: Africa now has three parallel settlement rails developing simultaneously. SADC-RTGS for regional currencies, CIPS for yuan-denominated trade, and stablecoin infrastructure for 24/7 digital settlement. The read is that this represents growing optionality away from correspondent-bank dependence, and directionally that's correct. What the framing misses is that each rail carries a distinct constraint at the currency level, not just the settlement level. Angola's kwanza is a managed, thinly-traded currency. Its inclusion in SADC-RTGS builds a settlement pipe, but doesn't itself create FX liquidity depth behind that pipe. Yuan clearing through CIPS operates inside China's capital controls, bounding its use to China-linked trade and debt rather than general-purpose settlement. Stablecoins remove messaging and timing friction, but every payout still depends on a licensed on/off-ramp wherever cash needs to land locally. The operative distinction for any institution evaluating this shift: rail-level optionality and currency-level liquidity depth are two different things, and conflating them is where treasury teams tend to overestimate how quickly correspondent-bank dependence actually declines.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
Ethiopia's forex liberalization is real progress, but multiple-rate persistence is a symptom of unresolved reserve and demand pressure, not a platform problem. Kenya's mobile-money interoperability solved the last-mile access question years before its FX spread narrowed meaningfully. Diaspora platforms usually improve transparency into the parallel rate before they help close it.
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J. Michael Smith
J. Michael Smith@JMichael_Smith·
Ethiopia’s digital remittance landscape has reached an inflection point. What began with a few platforms in 2021 is now a regulator-backed ecosystem of banks, fintechs, and mobile money providers channeling diaspora inflows more formally. Recent reforms, including forex liberalization, planned outbound payment channels, and a regulatory sandbox, are expanding what these platforms can do. The shift is clear: remittance services are evolving into broader financial gateways. Yet constraints remain. The Birr still trades at multiple rates across formal and informal markets, sustaining parallel channels. While digital platforms improve access and transparency, they cannot resolve deeper structural imbalances. The opportunity is real, but so are the limits. This AKOFADA analysis unpacks the nuances. Read more: shorturl.at/OfhVS Source : @shegamedia
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
Good thread on Africa-China settlement flows worth extending from an operator lens. CIPS growth (Standard Bank going from $500M to $1.2B) is real, but it's measuring bank-to-bank settlement, not what individual exporters and expats actually do with their money once it lands. Private actors keep routing through USD stablecoins even when RMB clearing is cheaper, because a stablecoin gives them an exit option. They can move it anywhere, any time, without China's capital controls in the loop. Infrastructure doesn't create trust or convertibility. Until RMB itself moves more freely outside China's own financial system, the dedollarization story will keep showing up in institutional settlement stats without showing up in how ordinary participants actually behave.
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s3unha
s3unha@s3unha·
there are many ways money flows between Africa <> China but w/o going into all the details, tldr - the lion's share of the volume won't use USD stablecoins - it's already happening on CIPS - adoption is accelerating - but there remain many unanswered questions 1/11
Octopus@Octop3s

the last time i talked about the idea of a crypto neobank built specifically for china. i’m not saying you need to become the next Alipay or WeChat Pay. just solve real pain points for businesses and individuals. the flow is pretty simple (found a web2 company already doing it well): • deposit local currency (+ crypto) • seamless payments for transactions • a card that actually works on popular chinese e-commerce websites (plasma already proved this is possible) WorldFirst does this really well, but i think crypto neobanks have a chance too. funnily, WorldFirst doesn’t allow unregistered businesses to join the platform, which means they’re primarily onboarding businesses. that’s a gap crypto neobanks can fill in. you don’t always need to replace the incumbent. sometimes you just need to build a better bridge.

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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
Worth pausing on the mechanics of the Onafriq-Privy partnership, not just the headline. Onafriq is Africa's largest payments network. Privy is stablecoin infrastructure owned by Stripe. The integration embeds wallet capability directly into Onafriq's existing product. The end user never touches a separate crypto app, never manages a seed phrase, never sees the word "wallet" in a way that signals anything unfamiliar. That's the pattern worth building toward if you're operating in this space. Every stablecoin product that's actually gained real usage in Africa mobile-money-linked remittance apps, embedded B2B settlement layers has won by disappearing into infrastructure people already trust, not by asking users to adopt new crypto-native behavior. The one detail worth tracking as this rolls out: it's explicitly framed as launching "in markets where regulation permits." That's the real constraint on timeline here, not the technology. If you're building anything adjacent to this, the regulatory-clearance sequencing market-by-market is the thing to watch, not the partnership announcement itself.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
MoU is the right word to focus on it's an agreement to explore, not a settlement rail going live. The harder question isn't blockchain infrastructure, it's whether Kenyan securities law currently recognizes a tokenized share as legal ownership at all. Until that's settled, the technology can be ready years before the legal wrapper catches up.
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ᴀʏᴏꜰᴇ ♟
ᴀʏᴏꜰᴇ ♟@Ayofe_web·
Africa is taking another major step toward tokenized capital markets. On July 28, Tether signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Nairobi Securities Exchange ( @NSE_PLC ), Kenya's primary stock exchange. It's an agreement to explore how blockchain can modernize Africa's capital markets. The partnership focuses on: ▪︎ Digital asset and blockchain education for market participants. ▪︎ The tokenization of securities such as stocks, bonds, and funds. ▪︎ Building blockchain-based market infrastructure for the future. This a w or l move..?
ᴀʏᴏꜰᴇ ♟ tweet media
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
One layer deeper on this. The three layers don't fail independently, they compound. A rail that's technically live can create false confidence that risk is handled, which is exactly when institutions relax on the liquidity and policy layers underneath it. The rail being visible is what makes the two invisible layers easy to skip.
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Noelle Acheson
Noelle Acheson@NoelleInMadrid·
"A rail can be technically excellent and a currency can be reasonably liquid, and settlement between two economies can still be structurally risky if their monetary policies are diverging. In that case, speed doesn't reduce risk." important read 👇 from @corridor_intel
Samuel M@corridor_intel

Three separate threads have been circulating this week on African payments infrastructure. New settlement rails (SADC-RTGS expansion, CIPS participation, stablecoin corridors), currency liquidity constraints behind those rails, and, in a smaller but sharper post, the observation that Africa's binding constraint on payment integration isn't technology at all. It's aligning monetary policy, inflation rates, and fiscal discipline across more than 50 distinct economies. Put together, these aren't three separate conversations. They're three layers of the same stack, and most commentary only engages with the top one. Layer one is settlement rails. The visible, fundable, announceable layer. Layer two is currency liquidity depth. Whether real FX volume exists behind a given rail, independent of whether the rail itself is technically live. Layer three, the one that gets the least attention because it's slow and unglamorous, is monetary policy convergence. Whether the central banks on either end of a transaction are running compatible inflation targets, reserve postures, and fiscal discipline. A rail can be technically excellent and a currency can be reasonably liquid, and settlement between two economies can still be structurally risky if their monetary policies are diverging. In that case, speed doesn't reduce risk. It just moves it faster between two points that were never well-aligned to begin with. For any institution building payment or treasury strategy across African corridors, the useful question isn't "which rail is best." It's which layer is actually the binding constraint for the specific corridor pair in question and increasingly, for the hardest corridors, that constraint sits at layer three, not layer one.

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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
Three separate threads have been circulating this week on African payments infrastructure. New settlement rails (SADC-RTGS expansion, CIPS participation, stablecoin corridors), currency liquidity constraints behind those rails, and, in a smaller but sharper post, the observation that Africa's binding constraint on payment integration isn't technology at all. It's aligning monetary policy, inflation rates, and fiscal discipline across more than 50 distinct economies. Put together, these aren't three separate conversations. They're three layers of the same stack, and most commentary only engages with the top one. Layer one is settlement rails. The visible, fundable, announceable layer. Layer two is currency liquidity depth. Whether real FX volume exists behind a given rail, independent of whether the rail itself is technically live. Layer three, the one that gets the least attention because it's slow and unglamorous, is monetary policy convergence. Whether the central banks on either end of a transaction are running compatible inflation targets, reserve postures, and fiscal discipline. A rail can be technically excellent and a currency can be reasonably liquid, and settlement between two economies can still be structurally risky if their monetary policies are diverging. In that case, speed doesn't reduce risk. It just moves it faster between two points that were never well-aligned to begin with. For any institution building payment or treasury strategy across African corridors, the useful question isn't "which rail is best." It's which layer is actually the binding constraint for the specific corridor pair in question and increasingly, for the hardest corridors, that constraint sits at layer three, not layer one.
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Samuel M
Samuel M@corridor_intel·
Having worked around settlement infrastructure, "near-instant" claims usually describe the on-chain leg only. If USDT isn't yet approved for settlement in Kenya, someone still has to convert diaspora dollars into KES-denominated shares through a licensed intermediary before the trade is actually done. That conversion step, not the blockchain leg, is normally where the real settlement time sits. Worth watching whether the MoU addresses that conversion layer or just the custody/fractionalization layer.
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The Kenyan Investor
The Kenyan Investor@KenyanInvestorr·
Tokenizing the NSE could be a big step forward, but it's worth separating the potential from the promise. The upside: • Fractional ownership, making shares more accessible. • Near-instant settlement instead of waiting days. • Easier participation for Kenyans in the diaspora. • A potentially deeper and more liquid market. The hurdles: • It relies on USDT, a private dollar stablecoin that isn't yet approved for settlement in Kenya. • New technology introduces risks, from custody issues to smart-contract vulnerabilities. • And for now, it's only an MoU, with no implementation timeline. The opportunity is real. So are the challenges. The real test is what gets built. #NSE
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@zappr_bitcoin @MiaKwaMia254 @NLongTrieu @WKahneman @koxy_Dev @apiconflagos @elonmusk @BarackObama