The State of African Payment Rails
What 90 days of production money movement says about how fast money actually arrives in Africa: measured medians per rail and market, mobile money against banks, and what the old wires still cost.
The one-minute continent.
Money sent to a mobile money wallet in Africa arrives, as a median, in about a minute. Not as a promise: as a measurement, across eight mobile money markets and 90 days of production transfers. The fastest market, Rwanda, posts a 47-second median, with 97% of payouts landing within five minutes.
The slowest measured mobile money median on the continent is Kenya's M-Pesa at 1.6 minutes, which is still faster than most domestic bank transfers in Europe. Every figure in this report is a median, never an average, so a handful of slow outliers cannot flatter or distort the number.
Mobile money usually wins. Ghana's banks argue back.
In most measured markets the wallet beats the bank: Uganda's mobile money median is 1.1 minutes against 2.6 minutes for its banks. But the gap is not a law of nature. In Ghana, bank payouts land within five minutes 90.6% of the time, edging out mobile money's 88.4%. Modern domestic rails close the gap fast.
The practical rule for anyone building payouts: route by market, not by ideology. The rail that reaches your recipient fastest differs by country, and the medians below are the routing table.
Where instant interbank rails exist, banks stop being slow.
Nigeria's NIP is the standout: a 57-second median to any bank account in the country, with 91% of payouts landing within five minutes. And because Nigeria's fintech wallets sit on bank rails, the same speed reaches OPay, Kuda and Moniepoint accounts. Where a real-time interbank network exists, the distinction between 'bank transfer' and 'instant payment' disappears.
The wire is still charged three times.
The contrast case remains the international wire: $25 to $50 in flat wire and lifting fees per payment, correspondent deductions taken from the principal in transit, and an FX markup of roughly 3.5% at a typical bank, hidden in the rate. On a $10,000 invoice that is about $400 of cost, most of it never itemized. The measured rails in this report deliver in seconds for a flat fee shown on the quote.
The full cost breakdownEighteen countries, counted the hard way.
The coverage number in this report counts destination countries where successful send-money transfers have actually landed, not markets on a claims map. The grid below shows the measured markets and their wallets; China appears as it is: in integration, with no numbers until it carries production volume.
Methodology
- All delivery figures are medians over a rolling 90 days of successful production transfers on Eversend's rails, refreshed with the same data that powers the delivery estimates on this site.
- Medians, never averages: a median cannot be flattered by a few instant transfers or distorted by a few slow ones.
- “Within 5 minutes” percentages are measured over the same window and population.
- USD bank payouts are excluded from the measured table: that rail moved to a real-time network recently and we publish estimates nowhere in this report.
- Coverage counts only what has happened: the 18 payout destination countries are counted from successful send-money transfers that actually landed, not from a claims map.
Journalists and researchers: we can cut this data further (by market, rail or window) for stories and studies. Ask via our contact page and reference this report. Contact us.