Africa is unlikely to develop a single pan-African super-app. Instead, the continent's biggest digital growth opportunity lies in making the financial infrastructure beneath existing platforms work seamlessly across borders.
This is according to Jamie Steell, chief operating officer of mobile money aggregator pawaPay, speaking to ITWeb Africa.
He said achieving greater interoperability between disparate payment systems offers a more practical, sustainable route to connecting the continent's fragmented digital markets than betting on one dominant app.
"I'm sceptical that Africa naturally ends up with one pan-African super-app. Africa isn't one market. Payment behaviour, currencies, regulation and mobile network operators vary considerably from country to country. What works in Kenya isn't necessarily what works in Nigeria or South Africa."
Steell, whose company operates across roughly 23 African markets, pointed to the continent's differentiated payment habits, distinct currencies, regional regulations and varied mobile network operator ecosystems as the structural barriers to a single unifying app.
He argued that consumers do not inherently need one application. Instead, multinational and local businesses need foundational infrastructure that lets their existing digital products operate across borders, without forcing them to build a new payment engine for every market.
"That's much closer to how we think about pawaPay. We don't need to own the customer relationship. We need to make the underlying payment infrastructure easier for businesses to access," Steell said.
According to Steell, a growing number of multinational corporations are viewing Africa through a continent-wide lens, particularly those distributing digital goods and services.
However, he cautioned that businesses still need to account for differences in consumer preferences, regulation, operations and payments between markets.
"Embedding a payment doesn't remove any of the responsibilities that come with moving money. Mobile money has some useful characteristics. The customer explicitly authorises the transaction using their PIN, and the funds already exist in the wallet.
"That gives it a different risk profile from credit-card payments and removes the conventional card chargeback model, but fraud still exists. Compliance still matters, and as the payment becomes less visible inside an application, customers need to understand what they're authorising."
Outside traditional fintech firms, Steell identified e-hailing — led by operators such as Bolt and Yango — as a strong example of embedded financial solutions at work, since these networks rely on frictionless payments to sustain ride volumes while disbursing earnings across their driver networks.
"Digital services and e-commerce are similar," Steell added. "If you're selling a subscription or another digital service in a market where people primarily use mobile money, supporting mobile money isn't really an 'embedded finance strategy'. It's making sure your customers can pay you.
"That's why I think this becomes less about fintech over time. It's increasingly about ordinary businesses being able to operate in African markets using the financial infrastructure their customers already use," he said.
Looking ahead, Steell said the next shift for embedded finance must move users from basic financial inclusion toward genuine financial prosperity.
"Mobile money can help with this by offering its users a vast range of financial services and a commerce ecosystem that can give consumers in Africa the same opportunities as those in Western economies today," he said. "Lending, savings and insurance will be a part of that for both consumers and merchants, but they have different economics, risks and regulatory requirements. The fact that you can embed a financial product doesn't automatically mean you should."
pawaPay's push for interoperability is not new. ITWeb Africa reported in August 2025 on the company's extended partnership with Airtel Money Africa, which opened up faster, direct cross-border remittances into Airtel Money wallets across several African markets — an early example of the kind of cross-platform payment plumbing Steell describes.
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