Ismaël Kouassi, Côte d’Ivoire Director for PawaPay: “We are a facilitator enabling businesses to connect with Africa’s mobile money economy.”
As the Côte d’Ivoire Director for PawaPay, a specialized fintech in African mobile money solutions, Ismaël Kouassi explains how the company acts as a vital technological facilitator. PawaPay enables businesses, banks, and SMEs to access diverse payment ecosystems through a single, streamlined integration. Kouassi emphasizes PawaPay’s core mission: simplifying payments, disbursements, transaction monitoring, and financial flow management for its clients.
Kouassi highlights Côte d’Ivoire and the broader UEMOA region as Africa’s most vibrant zones for digital payments. This dynamism is fueled by widespread mobile money adoption, advanced infrastructure like the BCEAO’s PI-SPI interoperable platform, and an evolving financial landscape, positioning the region as a true hub for fintech innovators. He foresees the synergy between traditional banking and mobile money as a key growth driver for financial expansion in the coming years, particularly benefiting SMEs by granting them access to more financial services through enhanced digital integration. PawaPay is committed to dismantling technical and operational barriers to accelerate trade, investment, and economic integration across the continent.
PawaPay positions itself as a payment infrastructure company, offering a unified integration, a single dashboard, and consolidated treasury services across approximately twenty African nations. What does this infrastructure role truly encompass? Where do your responsibilities end, and those of mobile money operators, banks, payment processors, or e-wallet issuers begin?
The simplest way to understand PawaPay is to view our enterprise as an enabler, allowing businesses to seamlessly integrate into Africa’s burgeoning mobile money economy. Mobile money stands today as one of the continent’s most critical financial infrastructures. By 2025, global mobile money services processed over 2 trillion dollars, doubling transaction values in just four years. This demonstrates that we are no longer discussing an emerging payment method but an indispensable element of African commerce.
Our primary objective is to grant businesses access to this expansive ecosystem through a singular integration.
This could involve empowering a money transfer company to send funds directly to mobile wallets, assisting an internet service provider in collecting subscriptions, supporting an urban mobility platform in paying its drivers, or enabling digital businesses to serve customers across multiple African markets. We provide the technological layer that orchestrates payments, facilitates disbursements, tracks transactions, manages financial flows, and ensures reconciliation. Mobile money operators retain responsibility for customer accounts and electronic money issuance. Banks handle core banking services and fund custody. Regulators uphold market integrity and supervision. While mobile money forms a crucial infrastructure powering African commerce, our mandate is to ensure businesses can easily access it across various markets.
PawaPay currently operates in 20 African markets. What informed the selection of your initial target markets, and what criteria guide your expansion today?
From the outset, our strategy focused on markets where mobile money already played a significant role in daily economic activity. Africa has pioneered some of the world’s most successful digital payment ecosystems, and we aimed to establish a presence where businesses were actively seeking to connect with their customers via mobile money. Even now, three key factors drive our expansion. Firstly, client demand remains paramount. We closely monitor the markets where our clients are expanding and seeking to reach new consumers. Companies like Bolt, Yango, LemFi, or GiveDirectly operate across multiple countries, and their needs naturally shape our priorities. The second factor is the robustness of the local payment ecosystem.
We prioritize markets where mobile money, digital commerce, and financial services play an increasingly vital role in the economy.
Finally, we place significant importance on the potential for long-term partnerships. Infrastructures are built over many years. Trust-based relationships with operators, financial institutions, and ecosystem players are essential. Our goal isn’t merely to add countries but to construct comprehensive coverage that empowers businesses to operate continent-wide.
Côte d’Ivoire, and more broadly the UEMOA, are often heralded as a future regional hub for fintech and finance. What makes this area particularly appealing for a pan-African payment infrastructure? What elements truly differentiate it?
I would assert that the UEMOA is already one of Africa’s most significant regions for digital payments today. West Africa processed nearly 500 billion dollars in mobile money transactions in 2025 and boasts over 517 million registered mobile money accounts, making it the most active region globally in terms of operational services.
Within this dynamic landscape, Côte d’Ivoire holds a strategic position. It is the leading economy in the UEMOA, a major financial center in the region, and a market with over 28 million registered mobile money accounts and more than 13 million active accounts.
What truly stands out is the deliberate investment in regional financial infrastructures. The PI-SPI instant payment interoperable platform, implemented by the BCEAO, serves as an excellent example. By April 2026, over 80 institutions were already connected, including banks, electronic money institutions, and microfinance institutions. For both businesses and financial entities, the quality of payment infrastructure directly dictates their capacity to engage in economic activity. For a pan-African infrastructure like PawaPay, this offers a substantial advantage. A regulatory decision or a partnership forged in Côte d’Ivoire can potentially influence several countries across the region. The depth of the banking sector, the high adoption of mobile money, entrepreneurial dynamism, and Abidjan’s geographical position as a regional economic center also contribute significantly to its appeal.
When a Francophone African bank collaborates with a payment infrastructure like PawaPay, what tangible benefits does it observe beyond mere technical access to mobile payments? How might this impact client acquisition, service costs, liquidity management, compliance, fraud prevention, or offerings tailored to SMEs?
Firstly, it’s crucial to emphasize the complementary relationship between banks and payment infrastructures. Banks remain central to settlement, liquidity management, compliance, customer relations, and comprehensive financial services. This fundamental role remains unchanged. What has evolved, however, is the pervasive influence of mobile money in the daily economy.
Transfers between bank accounts and mobile wallets reached approximately 167 billion dollars in 2025.
Flows in the opposite direction are equally substantial. The future, therefore, is not a choice between “bank or mobile money” but a powerful synergy of “bank and mobile money.” An infrastructure like PawaPay grants banks access to multiple payment ecosystems through a single connection, enhancing visibility over financial flows, streamlining treasury management, and broadening their capacity to serve customers. This is particularly relevant for SMEs. Many small and medium-sized enterprises already collect payments via mobile money. Banks that can integrate these flows into their financial service offerings can deliver greater value to these growing businesses.
How do you envision the evolution of the mobile money ecosystem over the next five years? Will growth primarily be driven by merchant payments, mass disbursements, government payments, e-commerce, B2B, savings-credit, or cross-border usage?
One of the most compelling trends we observe today is that growth is simultaneously emerging from multiple segments. Consumer adoption is already well-established in many markets.
In the UEMOA, financial inclusion rates surged from 56% to 71% between 2018 and 2022, primarily propelled by digital financial services and mobile money.
Merchant payments perfectly illustrate this dynamic. Studies indicate their volume increased by over 40% in 2025, making this segment one of the ecosystem’s most vibrant. This evolution reflects a deeper reality: mobile money is progressively becoming an everyday tool for commerce. We witness this across digital services, internet subscriptions, transportation, education, retail, and numerous other sectors. Cross-border payments will also continue to expand as African businesses increasingly operate across multiple markets. Mobile money is no longer a niche product; it has transformed into an indispensable infrastructure for African commerce.
The mutual recognition agreement for licenses between Ghana and Rwanda was seen as a significant indicator for African cross-border payments. What does it reveal, in your opinion, about the evolution of regulatory cooperation among African jurisdictions? Is this a precedent that can be replicated on a large scale, or is it an advancement still highly specific to certain conditions?
I believe it reflects a fundamental, increasingly visible trend across the continent. African regulators acknowledge that trade, investment, and the digital economy are becoming profoundly integrated. Consequently, regulatory cooperation can foster economic growth while maintaining necessary safeguards. The Ghana-Rwanda agreement exemplifies this. The harmonized framework within the UEMOA provides another illustration. While the approaches differ, they convey the same reality: economic activity now extends far beyond national borders. A single, universally applicable model may not emerge, but the growing willingness to collaborate, share experiences, and construct common frameworks represents a very positive development for African trade and investment. Ultimately, Africa will require more mechanisms for mutual recognition and regulatory harmonization to support the expansion of cross-border payments.
Ultimately, Africa will require more mechanisms for mutual recognition and regulatory harmonization to support the expansion of cross-border payments.
Many stakeholders envision a future fluid and interoperable African payment network. What, in your view, is the realistic trajectory towards achieving this goal? Which prerequisites must be met as a priority?
The encouraging aspect is that the essential foundations are already in place. Mobile money adoption is robust. Financial institutions continue to invest in digital infrastructures. Initiatives such as PAPSS, PI-SPI, and several regional interoperability programs demonstrate a shared ambition to strengthen connectivity. The next phase hinges on enhanced collaboration among operators, banks, infrastructure providers, and regulators. The objective should not solely be to accelerate payments.
The objective must be to bolster commerce, trade, and economic participation across the entire continent.
When businesses can more easily serve customers in multiple countries, when consumers have more options, and when financial institutions access a broader regional market, the entire ecosystem benefits. However, technology alone will not suffice. We must also address critical issues related to currency management, compliance, fraud prevention, and the governance of payment networks.
What role can infrastructure companies like PawaPay play in supporting the growth of a regional hub such as Côte d’Ivoire? Where can you create the most value?
Our role is fundamentally to minimize friction. Whenever a business aims to expand into multiple African markets, it encounters significant technical, regulatory, and operational complexities. An infrastructure provider like PawaPay is designed to simplify this expansion.
We empower businesses, banks, and fintechs to swiftly access numerous markets through a unified platform.
For a regional hub like Côte d’Ivoire, this translates into increased investment, greater innovation, and more enterprises capable of operating on a regional and even continental scale. The most significant value we can generate is to accelerate the flow of funds, services, and economic opportunities across Africa. In our view, the next stage of African financial development will not just be digital; it will be profoundly pan-African.
