Founder and Group CEO of eTranzact Global, Dr. Valentine Obi says Africa needs to quickly embrace the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPPS), describing the platform as the best thing to happen to the continent.

“It is not rocket science to find a solution that makes it easy for cross-border transactions in a way that is seamless,” Obi told JoyBusiness on the sidelines of the 3i Africa Summit held in Accra.

PAPPS was created to facilitate trade and payments within Africa, allowing countries to settle transactions using their local currencies instead of foreign currencies such as US dollar, British pound, or euro.

“It does not make sense for a Ghanaian doing business in Uganda, Nigeria or Togo to convert cedis to dollars for a transaction and later convert the dollars to another currency”, Obi who is also on the advisory board of PAPPS said.

The platform which supports over 40 African currencies is expected to simplify cross-border trade on the continent.

Dr. Obi also expressed excitement about the progress made with instant payments in Africa. He believes it will leapfrog the continent to the next level when it comes to payments.

“It gladdens my heart that a lot of people are talking about mobile payments. When eTranzact started in 2003 there was no word like fintech. People were not sure what we were trying to do, even the banks were not sure”.

The vision of eTranzact, Obi noted, was to make people believe they could make payments electronically. At the time most African countries were cash reliant. The dynamics of payment have changed as a result of this innovation - reducing cost and making it easier to make payments in a secure and convenient way.

Africa's electronic payments market is expected to grow by 152 percent by 2025.

However, this growth is likely to be uneven across the continent, according to an analysis by McKinsey & Company.

The growth will depend on infrastructure readiness, e-commerce penetration, mobile-money penetration, and regulation, among other factors, in each market.