Mobile money services processed more than $2 trillion in transactions globally during 2025, a 23 per cent increase from 2024, according to the GSMA State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2026. Eva Nyamori, Global Chief Strategy Officer at CapitalPay International, points to that figure in an opinion article published Sept. 29, 2026. Her argument is that the money moving through phones is only part of the story. The plumbing behind it matters just as much.
Nyamori's piece argues that private-sector builders of payment systems, not just app developers, may shape how African economies grow. Africa's digital economy already includes mobile money, digital banking, e-commerce platforms, fintech applications and online marketplaces. Payment infrastructure, she writes, is a less visible layer that may matter just as much.
The Cost of Disconnected Systems
The friction she describes is bureaucratic. Government processes relying on disconnected systems may require transactions to pass through several administrative steps before officials reconcile and report them. Each manual step creates opportunities for delay, error or incomplete information, Nyamori writes.
Digitising a payment isn't the same as fixing the process around it. "Digitising a payment is one step, while connecting it to the wider process is another," is the article's core distinction. Connected infrastructure, she argues, can make transactions easier for businesses to track and reconcile. It can also support more efficient government administration and visibility, while helping consumers take part in formal economic activity.
Digital records can improve information for decision-making, and greater visibility over transactions can support business management. Easier access to formal payment systems can widen participation in the formal economy.
Local Realities, Not One-Size-Fits-All
The article doesn't promise a quick fix. Many African businesses operate informally, consumers use both cash and digital channels, and connectivity and financial access vary within and between countries. Digital payments alone can't resolve those challenges, though Nyamori says they can help connect economies.
She also rejects the idea of a single African digital economy. Kenya's payments ecosystem has developed differently from Tanzania's, while South Sudan faces different institutional and economic conditions. Infrastructure, she writes, should reflect local realities while still connecting to wider financial systems.
African technology companies operating across multiple markets can draw on experience in different environments while adapting implementation to local requirements. The objective, in her words, should be to identify which principles can transfer and which need redesign.
What Has to Go Right
Nyamori lists the conditions plainly: interoperability, appropriate regulation, security, trust and designs suited to African markets. The benefits aren't automatic. They depend on infrastructure, adoption, regulation, trust, system design and implementation.
Her broader question is what happens when payments become part of the infrastructure linking consumers, businesses, governments and financial institutions. Africa's digital economy, she concludes, will be built not only through phone applications but also through the infrastructure operating behind them.
The author's employer is a payments company, and the piece is opinion rather than reporting. Still, the GSMA figure gives her argument a hard number to stand on.
Why This Matters: More than $2 trillion in global mobile money transactions during 2025 shows how much value already flows through digital channels. Nyamori argues that the next gains come from connecting those flows to business and government systems, cutting manual steps that breed delay and error. From a market-minded view, that puts weight on interoperability and trust, the things private operators compete to deliver, and on regulation that's "appropriate" rather than heavy. These outcomes depend on adoption, system design and regulation, and they aren't guaranteed. Governments that want the efficiency gains will have to build workable rules around them.