When Zambia moved its domestic card traffic off the international networks and onto its own National Financial Switch (NFS), one of the key objectives of the NFS was to reduce the cost of domestic electronic payments by providing shared infrastructure. That saving has not yet reached customers, and the gap between what the infrastructure promised and what a Zambian actually pays is where the country's next chapter begins.
The access question, by contrast, has largely been answered, and Bank of Zambia figures from the 2025 FinScope survey show financial inclusion at 80.1%, up from 69.4% in 2020, with mobile money usage at 76.2%. "Zambia's payments story is no longer just about moving money from one bank account to another," says Stephen Mulenga, regional manager for Zambia at Sybrin. "It's about how people, businesses, farmers, miners, SMEs and government participate in the digital economy."
The cost that didn't fall
The NFS connects banks, non-bank financial institutions, payment service providers, fintechs and mobile money operators, which spares each institution the cost of building bilateral connections to all the others. It supports wallet-to-bank and bank-to-wallet transfers as well as merchant payments, and an industry project is under way to add QR payments. Around it sits the Zambia Interbank Payment and Settlement System (ZIPS) for high-value settlement, point-of-sale infrastructure and mobile money, while cheques are being phased out.
"Zambia is moving from a fragmented digital channels arrangement towards a shared infrastructure arrangement," says Mulenga. But shared infrastructure is a starting condition rather than an outcome, and the promise of cheaper transactions is still outstanding. "There is something that is sort of unspoken when it comes to our National Financial Switch," he says. "One of the drivers was that it was going to drive down transaction costs for customers. That hasn't happened yet, but the central bank has got some focus on that."
Products, not people
There is no single obstacle holding financial inclusion back in Zambia. According to Mulenga, it is a combination of access, affordability and infrastructure, which in rural areas translates into limited agent networks, lower smartphone penetration, weaker connectivity and lower digital literacy. He adds a fourth barrier that is different in kind, which is that products are not always designed around rural income patterns. The first three describe people who cannot reach the system, while the fourth describes a system designed for a salaried customer with a predictable monthly wage, in a country where money often arrives seasonally and in small amounts.
Copper and maize
Zambia's two defining industries want almost opposite things from a payment system. "Copper and agriculture create very different but complementary digital financial needs," says Mulenga. Mining generates high-value, heavily compliant flows such as supplier payments, payroll, tax and cross-border trade, while agriculture generates demand at the last mile, in the form of farmer payouts, input financing, insurance and seasonal credit.
For Mulenga, the opportunity in both cases is to digitise the value chain rather than the consumer alone, and that is where embedded finance becomes practical. "Embedded finance means putting financial services inside the activities that people are already doing," he says, whether that is buying and selling produce, paying suppliers, ordering stock or receiving wages. Farmers need small, timely products rather than traditional bank loans, while SMEs need collections, reconciliation, credit and inventory finance rather than simply a way to accept money. "SMEs are the bridge between digital payments and real economic activity," says Mulenga.
Beyond the border
Regionally, the picture is one of steady work in progress. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has designed its Transactions Cleared on an Immediate Basis (TCIB) scheme for low-value, real-time cross-border payments, although the Zambia Electronic Clearing House (ZECHL) is yet to go live on it, while the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) operates a regional settlement platform for trade. Mulenga says conversation is also building at the central bank around integrating into the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS). "I'm sure within the next five years we should be sitting in a different space," he says.
The layer underneath
Beneath the payment rails sits the question of who is transacting. Zambia's Integrated National Registration Information System (INRIS) is intended to digitise civil registration and identity management. "Identity is the foundation for KYC, fraud detection, account opening, credit access and government-to-person payments," says Mulenga.
The United Nations Development Programme puts biometric enrolment at roughly 1.5 million people in a population of around 20 million, and the Smart Zambia Institute has said digital identity cards will be issued by the end of 2026. "Digital identity is progressing, but it is still in its implementation journey," says Mulenga. "It has been a work in progress for quite some time."
What Zambia lacks, then, is not rails so much as the habit of using them. "The biggest shift is from ability to everyday usage," says Mulenga, and reaching that point requires the full ecosystem to be interoperable, with banks, wallets, merchants, government platforms, fintechs, identity systems and regional rails all speaking a common language through standards such as ISO 20022. That is broadly the future the Bank of Zambia has written into its own 2027 vision of a round-the-clock digital economy.
"The future of payments in Zambia is not just about replacing cash," says Mulenga. "It's about a system that helps a farmer get paid faster, helps an SME access working capital, helps a miner pay suppliers efficiently, helps families receive remittances affordably and helps the economy move with greater speed, trust and inclusion."
For technology providers like Sybrin, the opportunity is no longer simply building payment rails. It is helping banks and financial institutions digitise end-to-end customer journeys through onboarding, identity, automation, fraud management and payments. The winners will be institutions that combine great payment infrastructure with excellent customer experience.
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