By Vivian Ihechu
From the electric rhythms of Afrobeats, vibrant runway fashion, and captivating literary works by African writers, creatives are spellbinding global audiences and redefining cultural influence.
Beyond artistic expression, this unstoppable creative explosion represents a multi-billion-dollar economic engine capable of powering massive youth employment and continental trade.
Yet, for decades, talented artistes, filmmakers, and designers faced suffocating financial barriers when trying to monetise their work across fragmented African borders.
Enter the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), a revolutionary financial infrastructure designed to seamlessly bridge these economic divides for creators everywhere.
When Afreximbank and the African Union first unveiled PAPSS in Niamey back in 2019, they set a bold target for continental integration.
Consequently, PAPSS was adopted as a cornerstone instrument for implementing the African Continental Free Trade Area, unlocking frictionless commerce across all borders.
By December 2020, African Union leaders directed Afreximbank to finalise the system, paving a clear path toward total financial unification for Africa.
Following directives from the AU Assembly, Afreximbank expanded the platform’s reach, ensuring every African nation could access this transformative payment grid.
Officially unveiled in Accra in January 2022, PAPSS instantly revolutionised cross-border transactions, making instant payments available to the general public.
Since then, the platform has made remarkable strides, seamlessly connecting central banks, commercial lenders, and businesses into one unified payment ecosystem.
Today, PAPSS powers intra-African trade through three distinct solutions: the Instant Payment System, African Currency Marketplace, and the versatile PAPSSCARD.
Recognising this immense economic potential, Afreximbank remains deeply committed to unlocking creative value chains, viewing art as a vital catalyst for growth.
Reinstating its commitment to unlocking the value chains of Africa’s booming creative industry, the institution describes it as a critical pathway to job creation and economic growth across the continent.
Speaking on digital payments, PAPSS Chief Executive Officer, Mike Ogbalu III, said the bank sees the creative sector not just as culture and entertainment, but as a full economic ecosystem that must be deliberately supported.
He emphasised that African creativity represented a structured economic ecosystem deserving deliberate support.
“We see the creative industry as value chains that can create value, employment, and actually help to boost the economies in Africa,”.
According to Ogbalu, this passion has translated into a structured engagement with artists and other players in the creative ecosystem to understand their real-world payment challenges and design solutions around them.
“We’ve had interviews with a few of the artists and a few people in the creative world, and we’ve listened to them.
“What we have now done is actually shaping our payment system, creating solutions to be able to support them”.
Building a PAPSS-enabled environment for creatives
As part of its broader digital strategy, Afreximbank is leveraging the PAPSS to build an environment that enables third parties to plug in payment solutions tailored for digital creatives – including royalties, licensing and cross-border earnings.
Ogbalu described the work as a two-pronged effort involving both internal innovation and external partnerships.
“We are working on it from two points of view.
“We have third parties who are creating products which they are plugging into our system on our own site. We are also looking at a few solutions which are still in the pipeline,” the official said.
He linked these efforts to the structural shift from physical to digital trade, noting that legacy payment systems were not built with today’s creative digital economy in mind.
He noted that fiat and other traditional payment systems were made for physical commerce; however, with value now becoming digital, payment systems must adapt to support it.
Within the PAPSS framework and the bank’s wider payments infrastructure, a new environment is being assembled to allow innovators to build targeted solutions on top of Afreximbank rails for the benefit of creatives.
“So, what we have done now is we’ve created an environment which hopefully we’ll be announcing, which now allows third parties to actually plug in and extend it, especially to digital, to creatives, pay for royalties and licensing and all those things,” the official disclosed.
He stressed that while the initiative was still evolving, the creative sector would remain a priority.
“So, it’s still a work in progress for us, but it’s a sector that we are very passionate about, and we’re engaging very aggressively.”
Supporting CANEX Exhibitors to Receive Local Payments
Beyond PAPSS and platform-level work, Afreximbank is also tying its payment innovations to concrete events in the creative calendar.
Papa Samba Thiongane, Head of Marketing and Communications for PAPSS, said the institution was collaborating with the upcoming Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX) event in Lagos in November to pilot solutions that would help African exhibitors collect payments more easily from local buyers.
He also highlighted the bank’s existing connectivity and its decision to use CANEX as a real-world test bed for new tools.
He explained that many creatives and entrepreneurs travel from across the continent to showcase their work, but still struggle with something as basic as getting paid on the ground.
In response, Afreximbank is co-designing payment tools with partners in the CANEX ecosystem so that exhibitors can accept local payments seamlessly, whether for tickets, artwork, merchandise or services.
“We listened to them, and we came up with a solution that will help them in that direction. And this CANEX will be the pilot, one of the first pilots for us, where we implement this solution.
“So, we are working very closely with them through our colleagues in Afreximbank at the CANEX Department,” he said.
A Broader Strategy for Aggressive Engagement
Taken together, Afreximbank’s PAPSS-enabled environment for third-party payment providers, its focus on royalties and licensing for digital creatives, and its collaboration with CANEX form part of a broader strategy to “aggressively” engage the creative sector as a serious economic pillar.
From commissioning interviews with artistes, to redesigning payment systems, to piloting solutions at major creative events, the bank is positioning itself as a key enabler of Africa’s creative value chains.
By seeking to remove friction from how creatives are paid—locally and across borders—PAPSS will facilitate, effortlessly, as a centralised financial market infrastructure that enables the efficient flow of money securely across African borders.
Some of the crucial benefits are that it minimises risks and contributes to financial integration across the regions, aiming to help transform passion and talent into sustainable livelihoods and scalable businesses.
This thereby enables it to contribute to employment and economic growth across the continent.
