Every exporter or importer who has waited for days for a payment to clear or watched a shipment’s margin erode to a currency conversion, understands the truth that policy documents rarely capture: trade doesn’t fail at the border.
It fails in the payment. Goods can move freely across a continent, but if the money behind them takes a week and three intermediaries to arrive, that freedom means little.
This is the quiet problem Ghana’s next phase of trade growth depends on solving, and it’s why two systems with unglamorous acronyms, CIPS and PAPSS, deserve more attention in boardrooms than they currently get.
The Cost of Doing Business Across Borders
For years, Ghanaian businesses trading internationally have leaned on correspondent banking networks, chains of intermediary banks that route a payment from one currency system to another, usually settling in US dollars regardless of where the goods actually originate. Each link in that chain adds cost, time, and uncertainty.
Payment can take days to clear, exchange rates can move against a business mid-transaction, and visibility into where funds actually sit is often poor. For large corporates with treasury teams, this is manageable friction.
For small and medium enterprises, which make up the backbone of Ghana’s export base but rarely have the resources to hedge currency risk or absorb delayed settlement, it can be the difference between winning a contract and losing it to a competitor with faster, cheaper payment rails.
Intra-African trade has suffered the same fate. Even between neighboring countries, payments have often had to be routed through currency conversions and external correspondent banks before reaching their destination, adding cost to transactions that should, in principle, be simple.
Two Systems, Different Jobs
PAPSS, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, and CIPS, China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, solve different pieces of this puzzle.
PAPSS allows businesses to settle payments directly in local currencies across participating African markets, cutting out the need for multiple conversions and reducing reliance on correspondent banks altogether. That translates into lower costs, faster settlement, and far greater certainty for businesses trading within the continent.
CIPS operates on a different corridor entirely, giving Ghanaian businesses a more direct channel for Renminbi denominated transactions with China, Ghana’s largest trading partner. Fewer intermediary steps mean fewer points of failure and faster, cheaper settlement when trading with Chinese counterparts.
Used together, the two systems don’t compete; they complement. One strengthens Ghana’s position within Africa, the other strengthens its connection to Asia and together they give Ghanaian businesses a more resilient, diversified way to move money that matches how they trade.
Turning Policy into Practice
The African Continental Free Trade Area promises a single market of over a billion people, but a single market only works if payments move as freely as goods do. PAPSS is the infrastructure that makes that promise practical rather than aspirational and its public launch in Accra, alongside Ghana’s role as host of the AfCFTA Secretariat, places the country at the center of that shift rather than on its periphery.
The businesses best positioned to feel this shift are Ghana’s SMEs. For smaller importers and exporters, payment costs eat up a disproportionate share of every transaction, and slow settlement can tie up working capital they can’t afford to lose.
Faster, cheaper, more transparent payment rails give these businesses room to compete in markets that were previously too costly to enter, whether that’s a trader sourcing raw materials for manufacturing, an agribusiness reaching new export markets, a mining company settling with international partners, or a digital services firm delivering across borders.
The sectors that benefit most are, unsurprisingly, the ones most exposed to cross-border commerce in the first place.
What Still Needs to Change
None of this happens automatically. Technology can build the rails, but businesses still need to know how to use them. That means boards and management teams treating payment infrastructure as a strategic lever for growth rather than a back-office banking function, and it means stronger treasury capabilities and digital literacy across the business community.
Regulators, banks, fintechs, and trade bodies all have a role to play in closing that gap, and banks in particular carry real responsibility here: educating clients, supporting onboarding, structuring trade finance, and helping businesses navigate the compliance and foreign exchange requirements that come with any new payment channel.
Interoperability between banking systems and regional networks, alongside continued vigilance on cybersecurity and anti-money laundering compliance, will determine how smoothly this infrastructure scales.
Ghana’s Next Chapter
Ghana already sits in a strategically valuable position: home to the AfCFTA Secretariat, an early adopter of PAPSS, and one of the African markets live on the CIPS rail.
If the country continues building out this payment infrastructure with the same intent it has shown so far, the destination is a Ghana that trades more competitively across Africa, settles more efficiently with Asia, and attracts the kind of regional treasury and headquarters functions that come with a genuine financial hub status.
Trade agreements open the doors. Payment systems are what let businesses actually walk through them. Ghana has an opportunity most countries on the continent don’t yet have, and the work now is making sure its businesses are ready to use it.
Kate Agamah, Head, Transaction Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking, Stanbic Bank Ghana.
