PawaPay CEO flags hidden risks beneath Africa’s $2.1trn mobile money explosion

Africa’s digital payments surge is running into structural limits, even as global mobile money transactions hit $2.1 trillion in 2025, exposing weaknesses in the infrastructure underpinning the continent’s fast-growing financial ecosystem.

That is the view of Nikolai Barnwell, chief executive officer of PawaPay, who says the real story behind the record transaction volume is not growth, but strain.

Mobile money’s surge to $2.1 trillion in global transactions in 2025 signals a deeper shift across Africa’s payments landscape, where the technology is no longer emerging but has become the backbone of daily commerce, according to Barnwell.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay, Barnwell said the headline transaction volume masks a more important transition: mobile money has evolved from a growth story into critical infrastructure that businesses can reliably operate on.

“In most of the markets we operate in, it is already the system. This is not a new payment method scaling up, it is infrastructure now running at real scale,” he said.

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The shift is being driven by rapid adoption among merchants, as businesses increasingly follow consumers who already use mobile wallets as their primary payment method. Improved reliability across payment systems, once plagued by failed transactions, unclear settlement, and manual reconciliation, has enabled companies to build operations around mobile money with greater confidence.

That reliability is now the key trigger for scale. As businesses begin to depend on the system, transaction volumes rise quickly, reinforcing mobile money’s central role in African economies.

Still, infrastructure gaps remain, particularly as merchant payments become the fastest-growing use case. Barnwell noted that while access is no longer the primary constraint, operational challenges persist at scale, including settlement timing, reconciliation, and confirming transaction completion.

“These issues don’t show up at low volumes, but at 10,000 transactions a day, they become critical,” he added.

Interoperability between banks and mobile wallets has improved across the continent, but fragmentation remains beneath the surface. Differences in telecom operators, banking systems, and regulatory frameworks continue to complicate cross-market transactions.

Barnwell said the challenge is less about technical connectivity and more about navigating regulatory, liquidity, and operational complexities across jurisdictions. “APIs don’t remove complexity, they just move it somewhere else,” he said, pointing to the need for licenses, treasury management, and strong regulatory relationships to ensure consistent outcomes.

Regulatory policies, particularly transaction-level taxes, also pose risks to growth. Barnwell cited examples such as Ghana’s e-levy, where taxation altered user behaviour and fell short of revenue expectations.

He warned that inconsistent tax regimes across countries create uncertainty for businesses operating regionally, potentially slowing adoption. Instead, he argued that governments may generate more revenue by expanding the overall digital payments ecosystem rather than taxing individual transactions.

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Cross-border payments remain another major hurdle despite rising demand. While the technical capability to move money across markets exists, practical challenges, such as foreign exchange constraints, liquidity shortages, and differing national regulations, continue to limit seamless execution.

“The main constraint is no longer technical. You can have perfect infrastructure and still have no business,” Barnwell said.

He pointed to emerging regulatory cooperation, such as licence passporting agreements between African countries, as a potential path toward a more integrated payments ecosystem. However, broader alignment will be required to unlock truly pan-African mobile money at scale.

For now, the continent’s payments story is entering a new phase, less about expansion and more about making existing systems reliable, predictable, and interoperable enough to support sustained economic activity.