Africa’s mobile money infrastructure is processing payments at a pace that would have seemed unimaginable a decade ago, and PawaPay’s latest numbers tell that story with striking clarity. The UK-based fintech, which connects businesses to mobile money operators across the continent, announced on Monday that it has now processed three billion mobile money transactions, with the most recent billion reached in under nine months , three months faster than the previous milestone.
Daily transaction volumes have nearly doubled over the same period, climbing from around 2.4 million to five million payments per day. That acceleration is not a fluke. It reflects a deeper structural shift in how African businesses are choosing to move money, and PawaPay is sitting right at the center of it.
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Founded in 2020, the company connects large and small businesses to nearly 50 mobile operators across 20 African countries through a single API, allowing merchants to accept and disburse payments without building separate integrations for each market. Since launch, PawaPay has processed more than €10 billion in total payments.
The timing of this milestone matters. Mobile money transaction values in Africa reached a record $1.43 trillion, marking 27 percent growth and accounting for over two-thirds of global transaction volumes, according to the GSMA State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2026. Against that backdrop, PawaPay’s growth is less of a surprise and more of a confirmation of where African commerce is heading.
Jamie Steell, the company’s chief operating officer, attributed the growth to a combination of demographic and technological factors, including a young population, falling smartphone costs, cheaper internet access, and the rapid digitisation of commerce. “Mobile money, as the principal means of digital payments on the continent, is growing year on year,” he said. “It’s like 20% up year on year consistently.”
What’s particularly notable is the shift in who is driving that growth. For most of mobile money’s history, person-to-person transfers dominated volume. Today, businesses are increasingly the ones pushing transactions through the rails. Globally, merchant payments surged to $155 billion, heavily driven by East and West African markets.
Heiti Allak, director of product at PawaPay, said businesses expanding across Africa should not have to build a payments company inside their own organisation, noting that PawaPay takes away the complexity of managing operator relationships, settlement flows, and treasury requirements so merchants can focus on their customers and growth.
Since 2022, PawaPay has also used stablecoins within its treasury operations to reduce settlement float and improve currency predictability, a notable move as more African fintech infrastructure players experiment with digital assets to manage the friction of cross-border settlements.
Three billion transactions is a number. But what it represents is a continent where mobile money is no longer the alternative payment method. It is the payment method.
