For years, sending money across West Africa’s eight-country currency union meant navigating a patchwork of networks that did not talk to each other.

A market trader in Abidjan with an Orange Money wallet could not easily pay a supplier who used Wave. A son in Dakar sending money to his mother in Bamako faced two sets of fees, two transfer times, two receipts. Cash dominated, and the cost of moving money digitally stayed high.

That system is now being dismantled by decree.

On 2 October, the Banque Centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO) published rules that make PI-SPI — the region’s shared instant payment platform — the compulsory backbone for electronic money transfers between individuals. From 2 November, those transfers must run through it.

The central bank also capped what providers can charge. Transfers of 8,000 CFA francs (about $14) or less per day are free. Above that, fees are capped at 0.8 per cent. Receiving money is free at any amount.

For a region where mobile money transactions reached 160tn CFA francs ($267bn) in 2024 — nearly 119 per cent of the bloc’s combined economic output — the change is significant. It also lands hardest on the companies that built their businesses on transfer fees.

What PI-SPI is, and why it matters

PI-SPI stands for the Interoperable Instant Payment Platform of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, known by its French acronym UEMOA. It launched on 30 September 2025.

The idea is simple. Instead of each bank, telecom operator and fintech running its own closed network, all of them connect to one shared rail. Money moves instantly between any two accounts on the system, regardless of which company holds them.

Eight countries use the same currency, the CFA franc: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. That makes cross-border transfers technically simpler than in regions where currencies change at every border.

The platform now connects 175 institutions, according to the central bank, giving more than 38 million people access to instant payments. Senegal has the most participants, with 43, followed by Côte d’Ivoire with 38. Burkina Faso has 20, Mali 19, Benin 18, Togo 17, Niger 13 and Guinea-Bissau 7.

Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire alone account for 81 of the 175 participants — roughly 46 per cent of the total.

The new pricing rules, explained

The communiqué applies to transfers between individuals. It covers bank and microfinance accounts, electronic-money accounts and payment institutions. It does not cover payments to merchants, bulk business payments, or the corporate APIs used by companies to automate payments.

Four changes take effect on 2 November:

First, routing becomes mandatory. Any interoperable electronic-money transfer must go through PI-SPI. Connecting is no longer a commercial choice. Banks and e-money institutions had until 30 September to comply. Microfinance institutions have until 30 June 2027.

Second, small transfers become free. National transfers are free when a user’s daily total through a single provider is 8,000 CFA francs or less. There is no limit on how many transfers make up that total. The central bank says this covers 75 per cent of electronic-money transactions in the union.

Third, larger transfers face a cap. Above 8,000 CFA francs, providers may charge between 0 and 0.8 per cent, calculated on the pre-tax amount. The range is a ceiling, not a fixed price. Providers can charge less, including nothing.

Fourth, receiving is free. There is no limit on the amount received or the number of incoming transfers.

Cross-border transfers within the union will follow the same rules, but only from 1 June 2027. Until then, the previous pricing framework applies between countries.

The detail that matters: the free limit is per provider

The 8,000-franc free allowance is calculated per user, per provider, per day. It is not a single limit across a person’s entire financial life.

That distinction is important.

A user with wallets at three different institutions can send 8,000 francs free through each of them on the same day — 24,000 francs in total — without exceeding any one provider’s threshold. Someone with five wallets could move 40,000 francs free.

This weakens the targeting of the free tier. It also encourages people to hold accounts with multiple providers, which reduces customer loyalty to any single one.

The communiqué does not say how a provider should treat the transfer that pushes a customer over the limit. It also does not specify when the daily counter resets. These are practical questions that will shape how the rules work in practice, and how disputes between customers and providers are resolved.

Where the money will now be made

The free threshold removes transfer income from the majority of person-to-person transactions.

That is a direct blow to Wave, the mobile money group that became Francophone Africa’s first tech unicorn. Wave built its growth on a flat fee of about 1 per cent on transfers — lower than the telecom-led operators it disrupted.

Orange Money, which held the largest share of regional transaction value in 2024, had already adjusted. It introduced a charge on cash withdrawals, shifting the cost to the person taking money out.

Others are expected to follow. With transfer fees capped and receiving free, the remaining revenue points are cash withdrawals, merchant payments and value-added services such as bulk payments and business API integration.

The communiqué does not address cash-out fees, and it does not address agent commissions. In mobile money, local agents handle cash-in and cash-out for a fee. If providers raise withdrawal charges, the economics for those agents change too.

The risk is that the cost of using electronic money does not fall for users who cash out. Across the union, most people still treat digital wallets as a way station rather than a place to store money. The majority of funds are withdrawn as cash. If withdrawals become the main revenue source, the total cost of using digital money may not decline much.

Wave connected to PI-SPI on 30 September 2026 — the last day of the deadline.

Its absence had been closely watched since the platform launched. Wave holds roughly 80 per cent of Senegal’s mobile money market. As of 21 August 2026, Senegal’s outstanding electronic money stood at 571bn CFA francs. Wave accounted for 459bn of that, against 106bn for Orange Money Sénégal.

Wave has about 11 million active users in Senegal, with penetration estimated at close to 90 per cent of the adult population. Founded in 2018, it reached unicorn status in 2021 after raising $200mn.

Its connection means Wave customers can now transfer money to and from accounts at other institutions. For a company built on a closed network, that is a fundamental change.

Wave is not on the approved Business API list, however, so its ability to serve corporate clients directly through automated payment services remains limited.

The gap between retail and business access

The retail side of the platform is opening up. The corporate side is not.

The central bank’s approved Business API list, published on 16 September and updated on 17 September 2026, contains just 24 providers across the eight member states.

Senegal has nine and Côte d’Ivoire has eight. Niger has two. Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Mali and Togo each have one.

In all five of those markets, the sole approved provider is Ecobank.

A Business API is what allows a company to plug payments directly into its own software — to pay hundreds of suppliers at once, reconcile transactions automatically, or track cash flow in real time. Without one, a business can still send individual transfers, but it cannot automate.

For a company in Cotonou, Ouagadougou, Bissau, Bamako or Lomé that wants to connect its software directly to PI-SPI, the practical choice is Ecobank.

HUB2, an Ivorian payments company founded by Ashley Gauzere, appears on the Côte d’Ivoire Business API list through its local entity, Connekt4. Gauzere has argued the concentration reflects sequencing rather than exclusion.

“I do not view this as a closed door,” he wrote. “Rather, I see a door opening in the sequence central banks typically follow: first, the entities they have supervised for thirty years; then, the others.”

He added: “From my perspective, what matters is the cost of the years spent waiting for that ‘then’ phase — and I have yet to see anyone put a figure on it.”

What the mandate means

The 2 November deadline gives the central bank full visibility over person-to-person electronic-money flows across the union — including the 75 per cent of transactions that now fall under the free threshold. It can enforce the fee caps and monitor adoption.

It also concentrates operational risk. If PI-SPI suffers an outage, instant transfers across eight countries are affected. The communiqué does not set service-level standards, penalties for downtime, or rules on data privacy and how the transaction data will be used, although these could be some of the criteria for being accepted into the new payment network. 

The central bank says the changes are meant to widen access, extend free transfers regionally, improve service quality and establish PI-SPI as the region’s core instant payment infrastructure. It does not say whether this was always the plan, or a response to slower-than-expected take-up of new services.

For operators, the immediate work is technical. For fintechs, the participant list is widening, but the business API layer remains the gate. For Wave, mandatory routing ends the legal basis of its closed network, even as its dominance in Senegal remains.

For the central bank, the test is whether a rail built to break down silos ends up concentrating value at a different point.

The platform is live. The mandate begins on 2 November. The register is growing. The business access map is not.