Author: Digital Trade Outlook
GABORONE, Botswana, October 10, 2025 (EZ Newswire) — Unipesa, opens new tab, a leading African fintech firm, and Mobipay Botswana, opens new tab, a fast-growing payment solutions provider, today announced a strategic partnership to expand cross-border payments and boost financial inclusion in Botswana. Backed by early shareholder Velex Investments, the deal combines Unipesa’s scalable fintech infrastructure with Mobipay’s local expertise to deliver secure and affordable digital financial services. Southern Africa remains one of the most expensive regions for international money transfers. High remittance fees and fragmented payment channels hinder the provision of affordable financial services to individuals and small businesses. By linking…
NAIROBI, Oct 9 (Reuters) – The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa has launched a digital payments system to cut transaction costs by allowing businesses to settle deals in local currencies, it said on Thursday. COMESA, which has 21 member states including Egypt, Kenya and Ethiopia, joins efforts by the African continent to push for local currency payments systems to cut trade costs by eliminating the need to convert local currencies into hard currencies, mostly U.S. dollars, for cross-border payments. The new platform, known as the Digital Retail Payments Platform, is starting off with trials between Malawi and Zambia, COMESA said…
Oct 8 (Reuters) – Trade finance company Raistone, a creditor of First Brands, asked a court on Wednesday to appoint an independent examiner, claiming that as much as $2.3 billion “simply vanished” from the bankrupt U.S. auto parts supplier. First Brands filed for bankruptcy protection last month after its lenders began investigating irregularities in the company’s financial reporting. The company has $11.6 billion in total liabilities, according to the court documents. Its collapse has rattled debt investors and sparked concerns of broader stress in corporate debt markets, especially about rising risks in private credit where lending activity has surged in…
Frankfurt, Germany — October 1, 2025 — Nium and Emirates NBD have expanded their cross-border payments partnership, extending real-time payout capabilities across the Emirates NBD Group in the UAE, with a rollout in Saudi Arabia currently under consideration. The partnership, first announced in 2024, now allows a broader base of Emirates NBD customers to access international transfers through Nium’s payments infrastructure. The expansion comes as demand continues to rise for faster and more cost-efficient remittance services across the region. Expansion Across UAE with Saudi Rollout in Focus The extended collaboration enables Emirates NBD to offer real-time cross-border payment services across…
Brussels, Belgium — September 29, 2025 — SWIFT said it is developing a blockchain-based shared ledger in collaboration with more than 30 global financial institutions, aimed at enabling real-time, 24/7 cross-border payments. The initiative marks an expansion of its infrastructure strategy as the industry explores digital asset-based payment models. The project will begin with a conceptual prototype built with Consensys, focusing initially on cross-border payments. SWIFT said the ledger is intended to support the movement of regulated tokenised value while maintaining interoperability with existing financial systems. Building Digital Infrastructure for Payments The proposed ledger will act as a secure, shared…