Free up your trapped capital. Remove costly currency bottlenecks.
The PAPSS African Currency Marketplace (PACM) lets African corporates, banks, and central banks exchange African currencies directly — near-real-time liquidity in local-currency pairs, no hard-currency hop, no two-week settlement window. Built in strategic collaboration between PAPSS and Interstellar on a private permissioned Bantu deployment. Live since 2025, across 19 nations under Afreximbank.
A continental-scale Financial Market Infrastructure, jointly built by PAPSS and Interstellar.
Launched at the 2025 Afreximbank Annual Meeting in Abuja and endorsed by the African Union. The first multinational blockchain deployment adopted by African governments at continental scale.
African businesses onboarded during the pilot phase, already transacting across 12 currency pairs.
Multinational footprint at continental scale under Afreximbank.
What Africa loses each year to the hard-currency bottleneck — fees, delays, opportunity cost.
Stranded in countries where airlines operate but cannot repatriate funds.
What the hard-currency bottleneck actually costs.
Stranded Capital
Earned revenue sits idle while businesses hunt for scarce hard currency. It isn't just "pending" cash — it's growth on pause. Liquidity that cannot be deployed when opportunities arise.
High Frictional Costs
Forced FX detours add layers of fees and opaque spreads. In many corridors, up to 16% of a payment's value evaporates before it reaches its destination.
Operational Delays
Two-week settlement cycles break supply chains, test partnerships, and can sink crucial deals. Slow money is lost opportunity.
A secure financial infrastructure for pan-African commerce.
Lower FX costs
Eliminate the 16%+ charges tied to the hard-currency bottleneck. Trade in local-currency settlement pairs, end-to-end.
Settle in hours, not weeks
Near real-time liquidity with unmatched speed. Two-week reconciliation cycles compressed to same-day clearing.
Eliminate hard-currency risk
Trade directly in local-currency settlement pairs. Stop being a passive victim of dollar volatility for intra-African trade.
Unlock new markets
Expand with confidence — your capital isn't stranded. Currencies that were trapped behind FX windows become deployable revenue.
Stay compliant
Operate under a framework trusted by African central banks. Permissioned, transparent, order-book driven, audit-grade.
Full treasury control
Manage pan-African liquidity from a single, powerful platform. One operational surface for every African currency you transact in.
Four steps. Local currency, end to end.
A clear flow that transforms cross-border payment from a multi-week guessing game into a same-day, fully-auditable settlement.
Submit request
Initiate your cross-border payment with full transparency on costs and timing. No hidden detours, no opaque spreads — every leg is visible.
Currency matching
PACM connects you with the optimal currency pair — directly. No hard-currency conversion. The marketplace, not a bank chain, finds your match.
Direct settlement
Local-currency settlement, with central-bank oversight and regulatory compliance baked in at the protocol layer.
Instant access
Funds land in the recipient's account with a complete audit trail and detailed reporting. Reconcile at ledger close. Move on.
Built on permissioned Bantu.
Permissioned mode
PACM runs on a private permissioned Bantu deployment — credentialed participation, controlled access, compliance overlays — without giving up the protocol properties of the public network.
Institutional security
The same HFBA consensus that settles the public chain in 2–4 seconds settles institutional cross-border flows here. Known validators. Final at ledger close.
Order-book transparency
Direct local-currency pairs cleared through a continent-wide order book. No black box. No correspondent-banking telephone game.
Blockchain-agnostic by design
Interstellar's STARGATE platform makes PACM blockchain-agnostic at the application layer — Bantu is the rail of record, but the architecture is built to last.
In their own words.
“PAPSS African Currency Marketplace is fully transparent, order book-driven, and operates with trusted counterparties, strictly adhering to local regulatory frameworks and global best practices. By creating a single, continent-wide liquidity pool, PACM serves as a powerful liquidity engine for intra-African commerce.”
“This is not just about technology — it is about fulfilling a continental vision. PAPSS African Currency Marketplace was built from the ground up to serve Africa's specific needs. PAPSS and Interstellar are not just collaborators, we are co-architects of a new financial future, aligned in purpose and committed to transformation.”
“The PAPSS African Currency Marketplace gives us the power to transform trade dramatically, bringing us to trade with each other with a major benefit that we can now accept each other's currency. Africa will not rise by ideas. Africa will rise by actions.”
The corporates already transacting.
Kenya Airways
Earning Nigerian Naira from ticket sales, exchanging directly to Kenyan Shillings via PACM — without converting through a third currency.
ZEP-RE (PTA Reinsurance)
An early adopter using PACM to settle intra-African reinsurance flows that previously routed through hard currency at every leg.
Continental Reinsurance
"The PAPSS African Currency Marketplace process was seamless and was of great relief in enabling us to move our funds across Africa."
Access View Africa
Among the pilot cohort that called PACM "a dream come true" for African treasury operations.
Three tracks. One pan-African rail.
Liberate stranded capital. Remove FX friction.
If you move significant cross-border volume and maintain a clean compliance record, your treasury is ready for transformation.
- Same-day settlements
- 70% cost reduction vs hard-currency detours
- Direct currency pairs
Access a new asset class. Earn meaningful returns.
Provide essential liquidity to a high-volume marketplace — ideal for treasuries and financial institutions with market-making expertise.
- High-yield opportunities
- Risk-management tools
- Dedicated support
Deepen client relationships. Secure, scalable.
PAPSS membership is the first step to becoming a core gateway for African commerce.
- API integration
- Compliance framework
- Revenue sharing
The continental-payment story.
PAPSS is a centralised Financial Market Infrastructure that enables the efficient flow of money securely across African borders. It collaborates with African central banks to offer payment and settlement solutions that commercial banks, payment service providers, switches, fintechs, and aggregators connect to.
Three solutions live today: PAPSS Instant Payment System (IPS), PAPSS African Currency Marketplace (PACM), and PAPSSCARD. PACM is the newest, launched in July 2025, and the one this case study is about.
Since its 2022 launch, PAPSS has enabled real-time cross-border payments across 17 countries, connecting 14 national switches and over 150 commercial banks. Initially piloted in the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), it has expanded to become the core settlement layer of the AfCFTA's financial infrastructure.
From AD 8 until the last century, the cowrie shell was a means of payment and a symbol of wealth across much of Africa — lightweight, hard-wearing, instantly recognisable, easy to count, difficult to forge. The shell takes centre stage in the modern PAPSS logo, surrounded by radial lines signifying the connectivity between the digital platform and the key partnerships that enable the payment system.
Some currencies are 1,500 years old. The infrastructure to move them at the speed of modern trade is two.
Your capital, liberated. Your growth, unleashed.
Open to eligible corporations, financial institutions, and other market participants across the continent. Same-day settlements, 70% cost reduction, direct currency pairs — under a framework trusted by African central banks.