Tuesday 2nd December 2025
by inAfrika Newsroom
In 2024, Africa’s instant payment transactions reached about US$1.98 trillion, up from US$776 billion in 2020, across 36 systems in 31 countries. Globally, real-time payments hit 266.2 billion transactions in 2023, a 42 percent jump in a single year. Tanzania is part of this wave. TIPS processed about 267 million instant payments worth over US$5.5 billion in 2023. By 2024, national real-time digital payments more than doubled in value to TSh 29.9 trillion (US$11.6 billion).
These numbers show why instant payments and credit risk can no longer sit in separate conversations. The same rails that move small-value transfers at high speed now generate rich, real-time data on how people and businesses earn, spend and trade. For Bank CEOs, the question is not whether instant payments will grow. The question is who will use this data to build better risk models and who will let fintechs and big tech do it first.
Regulators and central banks worldwide now treat real-time payments as growth tools, not just plumbing. ACI Worldwide’s latest study links instant payments to higher GDP growth and deeper financial inclusion. In India, for example, real-time rails now carry almost half of all transactions.
Africa is following a similar path, with its own twist. Systems such as TIPS in Tanzania and new regional infrastructures like PAPSS and COMESA’s Digital Retail Payments Platform aim to make cross-border payments instant and cheap, often in local currencies. These projects sit at the heart of AfCFTA’s vision, because high fees and slow settlements have long punished small traders.
For banks, this shift changes the raw material of credit. Instead of relying mainly on static financial statements and occasional account reviews, they now sit on continuous, time-stamped evidence of cash flows. Instant payment rails capture who pays whom, for what, and how often. When banks connect that stream to credit decisioning, instant payments and credit risk start to merge into one field.
In Tanzania and across East Africa, many MSMEs still look “thin-file” in traditional credit terms. They may lack audited accounts, formal collateral or long histories with one bank. However, those same firms often run thousands of mobile money, QR, card and account-to-account payments each month. TIPS alone already connects 46 participants and processes hundreds of millions of transactions a year.
If banks treat that stream as noise, these MSMEs remain invisible. If banks treat it as a new kind of balance sheet, they can see real behaviour. A small distributor that pays suppliers on time every week, receives digital receipts from dozens of retailers and settles taxes through electronic channels does not look like a high-risk guess. It looks like a pattern.
Global reports show that treasurers and institutions now demand real-time analytics that sit on top of instant payment rails. This demand is not only about convenience. It is about better, earlier risk signals. Late payments, shrinking ticket sizes, frequent reversals or sudden shifts in counterparties all carry credit meaning when banks have the tools to read them.
First, Bank CEOs can treat instant payment systems such as TIPS as core risk infrastructure, not only as channels. This starts with building internal data pipes that feed TIPS and other real-time transaction data into credit analytics. Risk teams then gain a live view of portfolio health, especially for SMEs, retail and corridor-linked clients.
Second, banks can pilot new scoring models that combine traditional metrics with instant payment histories. These models can support small-ticket working capital lines, supply-chain finance and overdrafts that flex with real cash flows. Early pilots can focus on sectors where digital payments already dominate, such as fuel retail, urban trade corridors and formalised agriculture value chains.
Third, regional expansion plans should include real-time payment strategy. PAPSS, COMESA’s new platform and national instant payment schemes give banks low-latency views of cross-border flows. When banks connect these rails to their risk engines, they can support intra-African traders who were previously deemed too opaque. This matters because cross-border MSMEs often sit at the centre of AfCFTA opportunity, yet face the steepest credit barriers.
Finally, governance needs to catch up. Boards should receive regular dashboards that show how much of the loan book is informed by instant payment data and how those segments perform versus traditional portfolios. Compliance and IT teams must also agree clear rules on data privacy, consent and retention, so that instant payments and credit risk innovation stays inside regulatory guardrails.
If East African banks move now, they can turn a fast-growing digital rail into a durable competitive edge. Instant payments will keep expanding with or without them. The real strategic choice is whether local banks become the institutions that understand, price and support these flows, or whether others extract that value first. The winners will be those who treat every real-time transaction as both a service and a signal.
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