A Guide on payment platforms for African businesses by Zoyk

Clive Nabale, CEO and Founder Zoyk.

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For many African companies, growth doesn’t stall because of demand. It stalls because of payments. A retailer in Lusaka may sell easily using MTN Mobile Money or Airtel Money in-store, but lose online shoppers in South Africa who prefer card payments.

A logistics operator in Harare may depend on EcoCash, yet struggle to reconcile bank transfers from cross-border clients. Even hotels in Johannesburg welcome international visitors but lose revenue when online transactions fail on foreign-issued cards.

Payments in Southern Africa are fragmented. Businesses must stitch together local payment methods, mobile wallets, cards, and cross-border transactions just to keep the money flowing. 

What should be a straightforward exchange often turns into delays, reconciliation problems, or even transaction failure. For business owners aiming to expand, payments are not just an operational detail; they are the growth bottleneck.

What we’ve seen at Zoyk is that payments are scaling, but the fragmentation is growing just as fast. According to GSMA, mobile money reached 2.1 billion registered accounts globally in 2024, with 1.1 billion in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. 

The region also processed more than 81 billion transactions worth over $1.1 trillion that year, making it the undisputed leader in digital payments.

Yet the data only tells part of the story. On the ground in SADC, cash still dominates many economies. Card usage remains modest, particularly outside South Africa, and settlement times across wallets, banks, and providers are inconsistent. 

For merchants, this means real operational friction: money moves, but not always fast enough, cheaply enough, or securely enough to support sustainable growth.

This gap between scale and efficiency is why payment platforms are no longer optional add-ons. They consolidate diverse payment methods, improve customer experience, and provide the operational resilience businesses need to grow across fragmented markets.

When assessing the best payment solutions in Africa, four factors matter most:

1. Wide coverage of payment methods. A strong platform must support mobile money, cards, bank transfers, POS cash payments, and increasingly digital currencies. Whether the customer uses EcoCash in Zimbabwe, Visa in South Africa, or Airtel Money in Zambia and Malawi, the experience should be seamless.

2. Cross-border interoperability. Growth in East, Central, and Southern Africa is regional, not just national. Platforms should handle multiple currencies, shorten settlement times, and provide real-time payments. Without this, scaling across borders from Zambia to South Africa, or Malawi to Mozambique, becomes slow and costly.

3. Compliance and security measures. In high-volume sectors like gaming, entertainment, or hospitality, downtime or fraud can erode trust overnight. A reliable provider must be PCI DSS compliant, integrate fraud detection, and maintain strong security standards. With regulators across Africa tightening oversight, compliance is not just a requirement; it’s a competitive advantage.

4. Infrastructure for growth. The best platforms go beyond transactions. They provide APIs for fintechs, subscription management for digital platforms, loyalty tools for retailers, and smart POS or QR code support for merchants in rural and informal economies. The goal is scalability, not just the ability to accept payments.

Zoyk has positioned itself around these needs. Instead of replicating card-first global platforms, Zoyk supports all African payment solutions, including mobile money, POS networks, and international rails. A single API enables merchants to integrate payment gateways that cover multiple markets at once.

For example, a transport operator working across Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi can accept local payment methods at agent POS devices while reconciling foreign card payments in USD. By combining flexibility with compliance, the operator avoids high support load costs and gains more predictable revenue flow.

As Artur Mildov, Chief Visionary Officer at Velex Group, often points out, payments are no longer a back-office function. They are a strategic lever for business expansion. 

Zoyk, as a Velex Group portfolio company, reflects this by embedding compliance, interoperability, and scalability into its design.

Zoyk’s platform is also PCI DSS certified, integrates real-time fraud detection, and provides merchants with automated reconciliation tools. 

Its modular design means fintech partners can start with payouts or wallets and expand into more advanced services like virtual accounts, loyalty systems, or issue refunds. This adaptability matters in markets where consumer behavior and regulation change quickly.

From my experience at Zoyk, I’ve seen that the businesses that scale fastest in Africa are not always the ones with the most customers, but the ones with the most reliable infrastructure. 

The most effective payment platforms combine wide coverage, strong security measures, fast settlement times, and flexibility to grow with the business and Zoyk can guarantee them all.

Contributing author

Clive Nabale

CEO and Founder, Zoyk

Connect with him here