Ten years ago, most people were content to wait. A cheque could take three to five days to clear and an EFT might stretch into the next business cycle. But expectations have changed, and so has the context. In today’s digital economy, cashflow is king. Whether you’re sending money to a friend or collecting payment for a service, the value of a transaction is often tied to how quickly it settles. “Business has evolved,” explains Avinash Naidoo, Payments Product Manager at Sybrin. “People want real-time payments and they want real-time clearing.” Across Africa, this demand is colliding with decades of legacy infrastructure and fragmented systems.
Relevant, competitive, inclusive
Naidoo believes there are three forces that are accelerating the rise of instant payments: inclusion, compliance and mobile access. “Financial inclusion is front and centre,” he says. “That means serving the unbanked and providing financial services to people who don’t have access, whether you’re a bank or a fintech.” Alongside this is the regulatory pressure to improve onboarding, identity assurance and reporting. As more institutions adopt real-time rails, the ability to prove who is moving money, when and why, becomes essential. And then there’s mobility. With smartphone penetration continually rising, the digital economy is no longer an urban luxury. For many, mobile is the primary connection point to financial services. “The store of value is no longer just a bank account,” says Naidoo. “It’s a wallet, a mobile number, a token… and people expect to move that value instantly.”
Crossing borders
Real-time payment schemes across the continent are becoming more robust, more connected and more central to national payment systems. Kenya, for example, has built out a domestic landscape that includes cheque processing, ACH, PesaLink (bank-to-bank instant payments) and, of course, M-PESA. “While cash is still king,” adds Naidoo, “wallets and instant payment rails have caught up fast.” Cross-border payments are also evolving beyond SWIFT as regional schemes gain traction. “We’re now starting to see inter-regional cross-border capability in the Africa context,” he explains. “Schemes like TCIB in the SADC region, PAPPS in West Africa and COMESA in East Africa are processing transactions in real-time. It’s no longer theory, it’s happening.”
Modularity and interoperability
Responding to this need for speed, Sybrin has developed a payments hub built for the complexity of African markets. “It’s a low-code, modular platform,” says Naidoo. “If a customer has cheque, EFT and TCIB, our hub can receive the payment file or message, validate the transaction and route it to the correct payment rail, instantly.” The hub supports full reconciliation and reporting at both transactional and consolidated levels. That means banks can track flows, manage liquidity and meet settlement obligations across rails and currencies. The platform is also built for interoperability, supporting the ISO 20022 message standard, which has become the backbone of modern financial messaging globally. That said, it’s not enough for instant settlement to be fast, it also needs to be secure. “Once a transaction leaves your account, it’s irrevocable,” says Naidoo. Sybrin’s approach includes layered fraud prevention that validates both sender and recipient identity. From real-time biometric checks and OTPs to confirmation prompts and documentation validation, the system is designed to stop fraud before it happens. “It’s about securing both sides of the transaction,” Naidoo adds.
Moving funds
Instant payments are also driving behavioural change. Customers now expect money to move as fast as a message. “The younger generation wants payment done yesterday,” says Naidoo. “They don’t care how it works, they just expect it to happen in real-time.” For small businesses and informal merchants, this isn’t just about convenience, it’s survival. Real-time cashflow means stock gets replenished, salaries get paid and the next transaction can happen. “Most payments in Africa are retail. It’s person-to-person or person-to-business,” he adds. “The use case is liquidity and if you can’t move funds quickly, you can’t participate in the economy.” Sybrin operates three national clearing houses (in Kenya, Zambia and Lesotho) each aligned with the central bank and supporting ISO-compliant modernisation. In Kenya alone, 22 banks use Sybrin’s platform to integrate with the ACH and process payments across the ecosystem. This work hasn’t gone unnoticed – Sybrin was recently recognised in Gartner’s Market Guide for Banking Payment Hub Platforms, a nod to its technical credibility and proven market execution. “We don’t just build for compliance,” ends Naidoo. “We build for the people, the businesses and the regions that rely on payments to work, and to work fast.”
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