Africa’s fintech story is still being written, and the next chapter looks different from the last one.
McKinsey’s recent report, Redefining Success: A New Playbook for African Fintech Leaders, maps the shift clearly. The growth-at-all-costs era is over. A more demanding, more compliance-conscious environment has taken its place, and the institutions that absorbed the funding contraction most comfortably were the ones running lean operations with infrastructure that did not require constant development spend to stay current.
The total addressable African financial services market is projected to reach $312 billion by 2028. The opportunity has not disappeared, the question is whether your infrastructure is positioned to access it efficiently, or accumulate cost in the process.
Six shifts. One operational implication
McKinsey identifies four dynamics reshaping the African fintech environment. Each one points to the same pressure point for banks.
Partnerships are becoming structural. Open-loop interoperability is driving new collaboration between fintechs, telcos, and banks. Banks whose payment infrastructure connects cleanly to multiple partners without custom development for every integration are the ones moving fastest.
Consolidation is accelerating. The banks best positioned as the market consolidates are running lean, automated payment operations that scale without proportional headcount growth.
Product innovation is moving from breadth to depth. The scaling opportunity now sits in embedded finance, SME lending, and cross-border payments. A modern payment layer supports these verticals. Fragmented legacy infrastructure does not.
Regulatory complexity is the defining operational challenge. The CBN in Nigeria, GhIPSS in Ghana, and the CBK Fast Payment System in Kenya are all pushing toward faster settlement and shorter reporting windows. Banks absorbing these mandates as configuration changes are in a fundamentally different position from banks running a development project every time a new requirement lands.
What the new playbook requires at infrastructure level
McKinsey’s four themes for the next stage of growth, focusing on value creation, pursuing untapped opportunities, verticalising products, and building with governance in mind, all carry the same operational implication for banks.
Banks running automated payment operations carry less overhead and reconcile faster. Multi-currency and multi-scheme support makes cross-border and embedded finance commercially viable. Regulators across the continent are requiring audit trails, role-based controls, and file-level encryption as standard. The banks that deploy new payment capabilities in months rather than years are the ones that reach the next growth verticals first.
Every one of these requirements runs through the same chokepoint: the payment switch. It is where transaction records are created, where mandates either land as a configuration update or trigger a development project, and where the cost of doing business in African financial services is either managed or accumulated.
The banks that lead the next decade will be the ones running infrastructure that handles compliance, interoperability, and scheme updates at the platform level.
Xpertek Group has been building payment switching infrastructure for African banks since 1989. SFI eVolve processes R32bn+ per month across 36+ installations in 21 countries, with pre-built connectors for T24, Flexcube, and Finacle. African payment schemes are first-class features, not customisations. When a mandate changes, you configure. You do not develop.
If you have any questions about whether your current infrastructure is ready for what the market now demands, we’re happy to jump on a call.
Book a call with Anneke Weber
info@xpertek.co.za | +27 11 519 3000 | xpertek.co.za/xpertek-sfi-evolve
This article draws on insights from McKinsey and Company’s January 2025 report, Redefining Success: A New Playbook for African Fintech Leaders, authored by Max Flötotto, Mayowa Kuyoro, and Carolyne Gathinji.
