As observed through 2025, payments across the Middle East and Africa (MEA) continued their shift toward digital and real-time models. In the GCC, government-led cashless agendas accelerated the use of cards and wallets, with Saudi Arabia surpassing its national targets as electronic payments accounted for around 79% of retail transactions in 2025, according to the Saudi Central Bank. In parallel, countries such as the UAE and Egypt continued to expand digital and account-to-account payment infrastructures as part of broader national digitisation strategies.
Across Africa, mobile money and A2A payments expanded alongside cards, supported by the rollout and scaling of national instant payment systems in multiple markets, including Somalia. AfricaNenda’s 2025 State of Inclusive Instant Payment Systems (SIIPS) report highlights the pace of this acceleration, showing that instant payments across Africa reached approximately 64 billion transactions, with a total value approaching US$2 trillion.
At a country level, this momentum is evident across both large and mid-sized markets. In Nigeria, real-time payment activity scaled rapidly in 2024, with around 7.9 billion transactions recorded and total electronic payment value reaching N1.07 quadrillion (approximately US$700 billion). In Ghana, digital payment adoption also accelerated, with around 8 billion mobile and electronic transactions processed in 2024 and total transaction value rising to GHS 3.01 trillion (approximately US$197 billion), reflecting growing reliance on digital channels for everyday payments.
As the region steps into 2026, the focus is shifting. The question is no longer whether digital and real-time payments will scale, but how well underlying infrastructure, risk controls and operating models can support always-on processing, rising transaction volumes and increasing exposure to fraud. The sections below outline the key trends that persisted through 2025 and the priorities emerging for 2026, highlighting what financial institutions, national payment systems and fintechs across MEA should be preparing for next.
Market Insight
Real-time payments are increasingly treated as essential national infrastructure rather than optional services. Central-bank-led instant payment systems are now live in many MEA markets and are designed to support broad participation across the banking sector.
In the GCC, instant payment platforms such as the UAE’s Aani and Egypt’s Instant Payment Network have enabled real-time account-to-account transfers and consumer-facing services, while Saudi Arabia’s Sarie system supports instant interbank payments at national scale.
Similar models are emerging across Africa, where instant payments are increasingly positioned as foundational infrastructure. Nigeria’s NIBSS Instant Payments system supports nationwide real-time interbank transfers, while South Africa’s PayShap, provides a retail-focused real-time payments service. In Somalia, the launch of the country’s first nationwide instant payment platform, powered by BPC, connected multiple banks through a centrally governed infrastructure under the oversight of the Central Bank of Somalia. A comparable approach is evident in Ethiopia, where EthSwitch, the national payment switch, is enabling interoperable real-time rails designed to support broad ecosystem participation and future growth.
As these systems mature, they are expanding beyond simple person-to-person transfers into everyday consumer, business and public-sector payments. Central banks increasingly describe instant payments as a core component of modern digital economies, underpinning wider payment digitisation and financial inclusion efforts.
What This Means for Banks
As instant payments become the default way money moves, banks, national payment systems and central banks must operate in an always-on environment where payments are expected to work reliably at any time. Operating models built around end-of-day processing or limited settlement windows become harder to sustain when payments settle immediately.
This shift requires upgrades across both bank and national infrastructure. Banks need systems that can process transactions continuously, manage liquidity throughout the day and provide real-time confirmation of payment outcomes. At the same time, national payment systems and central banks must strengthen the resilience, scalability and oversight of instant payment platforms as they become systemically important components of the financial system.
Where BPC Fits
SmartVista supports real-time transaction processing and routing across domestic instant payment systems, enabling banks and national payment operators to participate in always-on payment environments while maintaining operational stability, scalability and control.
In Somalia, BPC supported the launch of the country’s first nationwide instant payment system under the leadership of the Central Bank of Somalia and the national payment switch. Powered by SmartVista, the platform enables 24/7 real-time transfers and shared national standards, allowing multiple banks to connect to a common infrastructure and operate on a consistent, centrally governed framework.
A similar infrastructure-driven approach can be seen in Ethiopia, where BPC supports EthSwitch S.C., the country’s national payment switch. Owned by Ethiopian banks and developed to modernise the national payments landscape, EthSwitch provides interoperable e-payment infrastructure that connects banks through a shared national rail. By establishing a central platform for real-time and digital payments, EthSwitch helps reduce fragmentation, improve interoperability and create a scalable foundation for future payment system growth.
Market Insight
Across the Middle East and Africa, digital banking is increasingly shaped by mobile-first access and agent-assisted service models rather than branch expansion. In mobile-first economies, banks are using mobile banking apps to become the primary customer interface, while agency banking models extend access through local merchant networks that support onboarding and basic services close to where people live and work. This aligns with wider evidence that mobile-based channels have been a key driver of financial access and usage in parts of Africa.
In the Middle East, regulators are actively enabling app-led digital banking models. In Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Central Bank granted approval for D360 Banking to commence operations in late 2024, reinforcing the role of licensed digital banks in expanding access, promoting competition and supporting the Kingdom’s broader digital transformation agenda under Vision 2030.
Across Africa, scale is increasingly coming from mobile and assisted networks. In Ghana, the Bank of Ghana’s 2024 annual oversight report shows that mobile money transaction volumes increased to around 8.1 billion in 2024, while the total value of mobile money transactions reached GH¢3.01 trillion, illustrating how mobile channels are now embedded in everyday payments. In Nigeria, digital banking expansion is closely linked to the formalisation of agent-led delivery models. The Central Bank of Nigeria has embedded agent banking and mobile money operations into its National Financial Inclusion Strategy, positioning supervised agent networks as a key channel for extending access beyond traditional branches. According to CBN reporting, Nigeria’s financial inclusion rate reached 64% in 2023, reflecting progress driven in part by mobile and agent-based channels supporting basic banking services across underserved and rural communities.
What This Means for Banks
Digital reach is no longer measured by branch footprint alone. Banks need operating models that support high volumes of mobile and agent-assisted transactions reliably, including onboarding, authentication, cash-in/cash-out and customer support across geographically dispersed environments.
This also raises infrastructure expectations beyond individual institutions. National payment systems and central banks need to ensure that foundational rails and oversight frameworks can support rising digital usage, increased transaction velocity and wider participation, while keeping service reliability, consumer protection and risk controls effective as digital channels become the default access point.
Where BPC Fits
SmartVista supports mobile and agency-led digital banking by providing a platform that connects digital channels with core banking and payment systems. This allows banks to offer everyday services such as deposits, withdrawals, transfers, bill payments and basic onboarding through mobile and agent interfaces. By supporting these interactions within a single operational framework, SmartVista helps financial institutions extend access beyond traditional branches while maintaining reliability, security and compliance requirements.
This approach is reflected in BPC’s expansion in Nigeria, where SmartVista is used to support mobile banking, agent banking and payment services in a market experiencing rapid growth in digital transactions and increased focus on inclusion and security. By supporting scalable processing and integrated channel operations, SmartVista helps financial institutions extend access beyond branches and adapt to mobile-first banking environments.
Market Insight
Digital wallets continue to play a central role in retail payments across the Middle East and Africa, although their importance varies by market. In Sub-Saharan Africa, wallet usage remains a key access point to formal financial services, particularly where traditional bank accounts are less common. According to CNBC Africa reporting based on the World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 data, around 40% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa had a mobile money account in 2024, highlighting the scale of wallet adoption across the region.
In the Middle East, digital payments are gaining traction alongside broader digital financial service adoption. McKinsey research shows that 58% of consumers in the region prefer digital payment methods, and 60% of payments practitioners expect digital wallets to be the most influential digital payment method in the future, underlining a strong regional consumer and industry appetite for wallet-led payments. As these wallet ecosystems mature across MEA, the focus is increasingly shifting from adding more standalone wallets toward interoperability, enabling wallets to connect more seamlessly with bank accounts, merchant acceptance networks and national payment rails to support a broader range of consumer and business payment flows.
What This Means for Banks
As digital wallets become more widespread, banks increasingly operate within ecosystems they do not own. Many wallet platforms across MEA are led by telcos, fintechs or public-sector initiatives, requiring banks to support wallet transactions and settlement while maintaining reliability, risk controls and regulatory compliance.
In this context, banks differentiate less through ownership of the wallet interface and more through the services they can deliver within wallet ecosystems, such as credit, instalments or account-linked services. As highlighted in BPC’s guide on building closed- and open-loop wallet ecosystems, this requires a careful balance between interoperability and control, ensuring wallets can connect with bank accounts, merchants and national payment rails without adding unnecessary complexity.
Where BPC Fits
SmartVista supports this shift by enabling banks and payment providers to participate in wallet ecosystems without needing to own the customer-facing interface. Through a single processing platform, SmartVista connects wallets, bank accounts and underlying payment rails, helping institutions manage interoperability while maintaining consistent processing, operational oversight and risk management.
By supporting both closed- and open-loop wallet models and integration with national payment infrastructure, SmartVista helps reduce fragmentation as wallet usage grows. This allows banks to remain active participants in wallet-led payment environments and adapt as digital payment ecosystems across MEA become more interconnected.
Market Insight
As instant payments and wallet usage expanded across MEA through 2025, fraud patterns increasingly shifted toward social engineering and customer-authorised scams, rather than technical compromise of payment systems. Faster, irreversible payment rails have reduced the window for post-transaction intervention, making authorised push payment (APP) scams, impersonation fraud and phishing among the most disruptive risks to real-time adoption.
In Africa, the INTERPOL 2025 Africa Cyberthreat Assessment reports that cybercrime now accounts for more than 30% of reported crime in parts of West and East Africa, with online scams and social-engineering-led fraud among the most prevalent threats, closely linked to the growth of digital and instant payment channels.
Similar dynamics are emerging across the Middle East as digital payment options move into the mainstream. Reporting from The National highlights that the rapid expansion of mobile payments, QR-based transactions and app-led financial services in 2024–2025 has been accompanied by a noticeable rise in fraud attempts, particularly those exploiting user trust rather than system vulnerabilities. As a result, fraud risk has become a structural constraint on payment innovation across the region. For banks, national payment systems and regulators, the challenge is no longer only securing infrastructure, but detecting and interrupting scam activity before transactions are completed, without undermining the speed and convenience that real-time payments are designed to deliver.
What This Means for Banks
As fraud in real-time and wallet-based payments increasingly takes the form of social engineering and customer-authorised scams, banks can no longer rely mainly on controls that operate after a transaction is completed. Risk detection needs to move earlier in the payment journey, focusing on behavioural signals such as unusual payment patterns, signs of coercion or impersonation, and activity that falls outside normal customer behaviour.
With instant payments settling in seconds, fraud controls must operate in real time. Banks need the ability to assess risk as transactions are initiated, apply proportionate interventions when necessary, and stop suspicious payments before funds leave the account, while avoiding unnecessary friction for genuine customers. Institutions that manage this balance effectively are better placed to maintain customer trust and support the continued growth of real-time payments.
Where BPC Fits
SmartVista AI-powered Fraud Management supports real-time monitoring and behavioural analysis across cards, digital channels and payment transactions, helping banks identify and respond to fraud risks as payments are initiated.
In Mauritania, BIMBANK deployed SmartVista’s enterprise fraud management solution to strengthen real-time fraud prevention across its digital and card channels. This allowed the bank to gain better visibility into transaction behaviour, comply with evolving regulatory expectations and intercept suspicious activity as it occurs.
Similarly, Bank of Khyber’s focus on enhancing e-commerce security through advanced debit card technology reflects a broader regional priority: as digital and instant payments grow, banks must invest in real-time controls to protect customers and sustain trust in digital payment channels.
In 2025, Samba Bank, a subsidiary of Saudi National Bank, strengthened its digital security posture by implementing SmartVista Fraud Management with advanced AI/ML-enabled detection and real-time monitoring across card and digital channels, helping the bank respond to rising card-not-present and mobile app fraud while meeting regulatory requirements for comprehensive fraud prevention.
By supporting integrated, real-time risk controls that can adapt as fraud patterns evolve, SmartVista helps institutions maintain secure digital payment experiences and build customer trust even as transaction volumes and attack vectors continue to grow.
Market Insight
The replacement of legacy payment platforms has become a clear priority across the Middle East and Africa as banks adapt to higher transaction volumes, always-on payments and more complex risk requirements. Many card issuing and acquiring systems in the region were originally built for batch processing and limited digital integration, making them increasingly misaligned with today’s demand for real-time authorisation, e-commerce support and tighter fraud controls. Research from Deloitte highlights that banks in the Middle East are accelerating digital and core modernisation initiatives to improve scalability and responsiveness, with payments infrastructure identified as a critical component of broader transformation programmes.
At a country level, this shift is already visible. In Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, rapid growth in contactless payments, card-not-present transactions and online commerce has increased pressure on banks to modernise card management and merchant acquiring platforms to support real-time processing and stronger security controls. The World Economic Forum notes that the Middle East’s digital payments boom is being driven by mobile adoption, e-commerce growth and government-led digitalisation initiatives, reinforcing the need for modern payment infrastructure to support this scale.
Across Africa, similar dynamics are emerging. In Nigeria, sustained growth in electronic payments and e-commerce activity has exposed the limitations of legacy acquiring and card platforms, prompting banks to prioritise modern, API-enabled systems that can handle higher throughput and evolving fraud risks. These regional developments reflect global findings from McKinsey & Company, whose 2025 Global Payments Report highlights that payment rails are becoming more fragmented and digital, making modern, modular architectures essential for supporting real-time payments, digital wallets, card-linked services and advanced risk management. Together, these pressures are pushing legacy replacement in card issuing and acquiring from a long-term ambition to an operational necessity across MEA.
What This Means for Banks
For banks, modernising card issuing and acquiring platforms is becoming a necessary step to support always-on payments, rising transaction volumes and more demanding security requirements. Legacy systems, often designed for batch processing and limited integration, make it harder to launch new card products, support digital commerce or apply consistent risk controls across channels.
Replacing or modernising these platforms allows banks to simplify their payment architecture, reduce operational bottlenecks and respond more quickly to market and regulatory change. Institutions that move earlier are better positioned to support contactless, e-commerce and card-not-present growth, integrate with real-time payment rails, and maintain consistent oversight as digital payment activity continues to scale across the region.
Where BPC Fits
SmartVista supports the modernisation of card issuing and acquiring by providing a modular platform that can replace or coexist with legacy systems while enabling real-time processing and integration with digital channels. This allows banks to modernise critical payment functions without disrupting existing operations, supporting a gradual transition away from batch-based platforms.
Concrete examples illustrate this approach in action. In 2025, Artea Bank adopted BPC’s SmartVista platform to modernise its card issuing infrastructure, adding support for Mastercard products, mobile tokenisation and real-time fraud management as part of a broader digital strategy. Similarly, Pubali Bank PLC signed a strategic agreement to migrate from its legacy card stack to SmartVista’s next-generation card management system, aimed at accelerating digital product launches, strengthening risk controls and enhancing overall payment reliability.
By consolidating card management, acquiring and related payment services within a single architecture, SmartVista helps banks reduce system fragmentation and improve operational visibility, enabling them to support contactless, e-commerce and card-not-present activity while meeting evolving regulatory and security expectations.
The Road Ahead for MEA Payments
As 2026 is unfolding, digital and real-time payments across the Middle East and Africa are firmly established as core infrastructure rather than emerging capabilities. The focus has shifted from rollout to execution, with greater emphasis on scalability, resilience and risk management as transaction volumes rise and payments become always on.
Across the region, instant payments are being treated as national infrastructure, digital banking is extending reach through mobile and agent-led models, and wallet ecosystems are maturing with interoperability taking priority over scale. At the same time, growing fraud risks and the need to replace ageing card and acquiring platforms are pushing institutions to modernise how payments are processed, secured and operated. How effectively banks and payment systems connect and strengthen these foundations will shape the next phase of growth across MEA.