Africa has the trade agreement. What it has lacked, until recently, is the plumbing to move money as freely as the agreement moves goods. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) links 54 of Africa’s 55 nations into a single market of roughly 1.4 billion people and a combined GDP of about $3.4 trillion, making it the largest free trade area in the world by number of participating countries. On paper, that scale should have transformed intra-African trade years ago. In practice, it has been held back by something far less glamorous than tariffs: the cost and speed of actually paying for goods across a border.
The problem payment innovation is solving
Historically, a business in Nairobi paying a supplier in Accra had to route that payment through correspondent banks abroad, often in London or New York, converting shillings to dollars, dollars to cedis, and absorbing fees at every step. According to World Bank remittance data, sending money across African borders has cost an average of 7 to 8 percent of the value transferred, with settlement often taking three to seven business days. For a small business operating on thin margins, that cost and delay alone can make cross-border trade not worth attempting.
Across the continent, a wave of new payment infrastructure has emerged in direct response to this gap, local currency settlement systems, instant payment networks, and mobile money integrations designed specifically to cut out the detour through foreign correspondent banks. The direction of travel is clear: faster settlement, lower fees, and fewer intermediaries standing between a business and its money.
What this means for Kenya specifically
Kenya’s payment landscape has moved quickly to keep pace with this shift. Local instant payment networks, mobile money platforms, and card and bank transfer rails have all continued to mature, giving Kenyan businesses more ways than ever to collect and settle payments both locally and across borders. The Central Bank of Kenya has publicly backed efforts to remove the financial obstacles that have historically made cross-border trade slow and expensive for Kenyan businesses.
This matters enormously for Kenya’s small and medium enterprises, which, like across the rest of the continent, make up roughly 90 percent of businesses and around half of GDP. Efficient, affordable payment infrastructure is not a convenience for these businesses. It is often the deciding factor in whether cross-border trade is worth attempting at all, whether that’s a Kenyan agro-processor exporting to Ghana, or a manufacturer sourcing components from Rwanda.
The bigger picture
Africa’s cross-border payments market as a whole is valued at approximately $329 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $1 trillion by 2035. AfCFTA is one of the biggest forces driving that growth, as intra-African trade expands, demand for the payment infrastructure to support it grows right alongside it. Intra-African trade itself is forecast to rise roughly 10 percent in 2026, reaching an estimated $230 billion, up from $210 billion the year before, according to Afreximbank’s African Trade and Economic Outlook 2026.
None of this happens automatically. Tariff schedules and trade agreements set the stage, but it is payment innovation, the systems, platforms, and rails that businesses actually use day to day, that determines whether a business in Nairobi can get paid by a customer in Lagos without losing a week and a chunk of the transaction to fees along the way.
Where this leaves Kenyan businesses
As Africa’s free trade market matures, the businesses best positioned to benefit will be the ones with reliable, flexible payment infrastructure behind them, platforms that make it simple to collect, settle, and manage money across the different channels customers and partners actually use. That’s the kind of infrastructure Marasoft Pay works to provide for Kenyan businesses navigating this landscape.
Learn more about how Marasoft Pay supports Kenyan businesses at marasoftpaykenya.com.
For more insights on payments, digital finance, and what’s shaping business in Kenya today, explore more articles on the Marasoft Pay blog.